Το άρθρο του John Lichfield στην Independent

Αποσπάσματα από το "Sick man of Europe seeks remedy from wary neighbours"

....Conversations in Athens in the last few days – with politicians, business figures, union leaders, pollsters and people in cafés and on the street – suggest that Greece may now be ready to accept the pain of long overdue reform if the pain is shared evenly. The problem is that nothing in Greece is even; many things are fragmented. The sparkling new Athens metro, largely funded by the EU, co-exists with crumbling third-world pavements. Luxury shops are opening up in the wealthy district of Kolonaki. Two or three blocks away, in the poorer district of Exarchia – epicentre of the 2008 riots – almost half the local shops are boarded up....

...Almost 30 years after joining the EU, Greece remains partly a country of the Levant and the Balkans and not a fully developed European economy or political system. The self-employed, from doctors to restaurant owners, represent two-thirds of the workforce. By entering risibly low but unchallenged tax returns – an average of €4,000 for restaurant owners, €10,000 for lawyers – they pay almost no income tax. The number of state employees has more than doubled to over one million since Greece joined the EU in 1981. Many Greek civil servants retire in their forties or fifties on high pensions....

....Generations of Greeks have shrugged their shoulders at the problems or found their own way through the morass. (The black economy is thought to be 30 per cent of the "real" economy.) But these attitudes may be changing. Paschalis Aganidis, 28, spokesman for "Generation €700" – a centrist pressure group for young Greeks – says that people of his age are beginning to ask why Greece should not be more like other developed nations. "Our society is characterised by corruption, impunity, cronyism and bureaucracy," he said. "The greatest victims of these traditions are young people, who will pay the accumulated debt for decades to come but can't find secure, well-paid jobs. This crisis could be a good thing. Greeks see that things cannot now go on as before."....