Macron asks EU firms to invest in Greece

French President Emmanuel Macron urged European firms to step up their investments in Greece to help reduce the cashstrapped country’s growing reliance on non-European countries.

Addressing a round-table of Greek and French business leaders Friday, Macron said Greece was “forced” to choose non-European investors “because the Europeans were not there.”

French enterprises, he said with certainty, would ramp up their investments in Greece, a country that’s spent much of the past decade hurtling from one crisis to the next and seen its economy shrink by a quarter and unemployment and poverty levels swell alarmingly.

“We want Korean, Chinese and American investments, these are very important,” he said. “But if there are no European investors, then we are forced to select non-European investors.”

A failure to respond, he said, would show that Europeans have “no faith in Europe.”

Greece has relied on international bailouts to stay afloat, after losing bond market access in 2010. Following years of belt-tightening that’s seen improvements in the country’s annual budget, Greece’s bailout era is due to end in the summer of 2018.

In return for the money that’s prevented the country’s bankruptcy, Greece has been compelled to institute economic reforms, including the sale of state-owned assets, such as airports, ports, railways and real estate. /