GREECE BEGINS ITS RECKONING
As the cuts take effect, homemade wine becomes an unaffordable luxury,
ATHENS, GREECE— After the capitulation of Greece to its creditor nations in Europe, Panagiotis Katsis, a retired accountant, did what he does best. The math. Under the harsh conditions of Greece’s € 86-billion bailout ($122 billion), social security will be cut. The 65-year old calculates that will shave 45 euros ($64) off his € 950-a-month check.
Property taxes are also set to rise, so he’s budgeting for a hit of about 700 euros ($992) a year. Add creditors’ demands to raise national revenue through price hikes on a host of foods — pasta, canned tuna, cereal, you name it — and he’s guessing 35 euros more on his monthly grocery bill.
“Europe thinks of Greece only as numbers,” said Katsis, who now supports himself and his wife, Mary, a retired housewife, on his pension cheque. “Cut this. Cut that. But we are people, and we’ve had five years of this already. We’ve had enough.”
Fratzeska Sklavou, 45, and her husband, Kosmas Thanasias, 52, were glued to the television set in their three-bedroom apartment with a peekaboo view of the Aegean Sea during the final negotiations between Greece and Germany.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had given his first major interview as head of his party at the couple’s Athens coffee shop early in 2008.
Their interest in the summit was hardly casual. One of the austerity measures on the table was a higher tax for Greek coffee shops that was going to cost their business almost 920 euros ($1,300) a month.
“We didn’t blame him,” Sklavou said, sitting in the couple’s half-empty coffee shop after Tsipras had caved. “They squeezed him. They gave him no choice. But right now, it’s hard to know who to blame. We’re just upset. More than upset, we’re feeling hopeless. Depressed.”
The austerity bill includes a new tax on coffee shops that will hit them when their business is already down 50 per cent.
“We have three choices,” said Thanasias. “Cut our profits, which are already shrinking; increase prices and drive away our clients; or cut staff,” he said. “We’re going to go with option 1.”
“For now,” Sklavou said, interrupting her husband as an idle waitress lingered nearby. “For now.”
For retirees like Katsis, the new round of austerity means another choice. What to cut now?
After a 20-per-cent austerity cut to his pension in August 2012, he gave up his favourite hobby — brewing homemade wine — because he couldn’t afford the grapes and bottles anymore. With anoth- er hit to his pension coming, “there’s not much left to cut,” he said.
His wife doesn’t want to give up their monthly visit to the theatre. So maybe it will be Katsis who gives up his occasional trips to the Aegean Sea to chat with friends over a glass of Greek ouzo. “It’s not so much the drinks I can’t afford,” he said. “It’s the gas.”
But that’s the price, according to Greece’s creditors led by Germany, the country must pay to avoid something worse. And if Katsis is one face of the pain of austerity, he is also an example of why some Europeans have driven such a bargain.
He is now 65. But under what had been one of the most generous retirement systems in Europe, he was able to retire in 2011, at age 61. Among other changes demanded by Europe, starting in 2022, most Greeks will need to wait until age 67.
Katsis voted “No” in the July referendum on a cash-for-cuts deal. But like so many others who did, he doesn’t want cuts — but he also doesn’t want to leave the euro. European leaders say Greeks can’t have it both ways.
Although some have blamed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s taskmaster who has insisted on a hard deal, Katsis doesn’t.
“Look, she is fighting for her country,” he said. “I only wish we had someone in Greece who would fight as hard for us.”