On outskirts of Europe, help from Brussels appreciated

Support funds help to keep local businesses alive

RHODES, May 11, (AFP): The European Union flag has often been put to the torch on the protest-hit streets of Athens — but in poorer towns and villages across Greece Brussels folk get a warmer reception.

The reason is simple: European regional support funds helping to keep local businesses alive.

Since the start of the Greek crisis, the EU’s point man on regional development, Commissioner Johannes Hahn, has been criss-crossing the country in search of viable businesses to back.

And some cases, local authorities are actually happier dealing with the European bureaucracy than the Greek authorities.

“Athens gives us very little financial autonomy, all we get to manage is debt,” said Ioannis Machairidis, governor of the southern Aegean islands.

“The (state) bureaucracy is terrible. Government effectively boils down to a finance minister whose only care is to meet fiscal goals,” he added.

Hahn’s latest destination was the island of Rhodes in late April, where he visited a honey co-operative and a Byzantine church in one of the island capital’s Medieval districts that is being renovated.

So far he has also toured highways, ports, archaeological sites, food producers, manufacturers and waste landfills.

“European funds helped to keep us standing,” a grateful local official later told Hahn.

At a meeting with stakeholders, Hahn was bombarded with questions on the island’s tenuous connection to the mainland and frequent healthcare shortages following sweeping state budget cuts mandated by Greece’s EUIMF creditors.

“How do we preserve our human capital? Why does the EU not subsidise island maritime services? Can e-medicine really remedy the lack of doctors?” the islanders asked.

Ten Greek trips down, and with three more to go, the Austrian commissioner said his goal is “to show that Europe is present not just in state capitals.”

Wherever he went, he frequently repeated that “Europe cannot solve all problems, but can diminish some of them”. And above all, that it is up to the Greeks to make good choices on how to spend the money.

Tassos, a 35-year-old confectioner in Athens, never thought he would be picked out for EU assistance.

He hopes to soon recoup from EU funds some 80,000 euros he has invested in his business — but before he gets the money he has to furnish exhaustive proof on every cent claimed.

“You have to prove everything, from your training credentials down to the type of fridge purchased and the number of shelves installed, and with pic- tures,” he said.

“There have been too many cases of fund abuse,” he added.

Greece has been a major net beneficiary of European support funds since its entry into the then European Economic Community in 1981.

But the money was not always well spent — indeed, tales abound of EU funds going astray.

An investigation is currently ongoing after reports that the family of a Greek ex-minister allegedly used EU funds to renovate their country home.

According to a study by Eurobank, one of Greece’s top lenders, European cohesion funds boosted the nation’s output by 1.6 percent each year between 2000 and 2006.

In the latest programme period, which ran from 2007 to 2013, Greece was allocated 20.2 billion euros ($28 billion) out of a total budget of 354.2 billion euros.

In Greece the cohesion fund is known under the acronym ‘ESPA’ (national strategic reference framework) and the logo is ever-present in hotels, shops, highways, ports, schools, employment programmes and business startups.

During the 2014-2020 period, it stands to receive 15.5 billion euros out of 310.8 billion euros, proportionately a net drop that brings Greece to tenth position among EU member states, from eighth previously.