Outrage in Athens at German ‘coup’
SURROUNDED by blood and guts, fish merchants at the oldest market in Athens competed to shout out their prices yesterday, much as their forebears have done since ancient times.
But amid the smells of fish, sweat and tobacco in the shadow of the Acropolis, there was little traditional good-natured banter.
For these market workers, along with many other Greeks, are furious about the deal announced yesterday to ‘save’ their country.
It leaves fishermen – not to mention taxi-drivers and shopkeepers – facing, among other things, a new 23 per cent VAT rate they say will devastate their businesses.
For the first time reporting on this unfolding crisis since 2010, I received an angry reception when I asked about the deal.
‘Go away Europe – go away!’ one fish merchant said, refusing to look at me. ‘We’ve had enough of Europe! I don’t want to be talking to you about anything. Get away from us now, European malacca (w*****)!’ The anger is palpable here. Social media is deluged by comments under the hashtag #ThisIsACoup, with users claiming Germany is ‘destroying Europe once again’.
Posters depict Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, as a Nazi.
Outside his shop selling garden tools not far from the Greek parliament, Yiannis Silla, 45, echoed many other Greeks in claiming his country was ‘set-up’ into joining the euro and then encouraged to take more and more loans.
‘They gave us all this money – now the Germans want to come into our land, the way bailiffs would come into your house, and
take everything we own away,’ he said. ‘They are crushing us.’
That sense of victimhood was evident in the capital yesterday, with shopkeepers, cafe owners and Left-wing activists all telling me they believe that, 74 years after they were occupied by Hitler’s nazi forces, 500 German tax inspectors could be drafted in to Athens to crackdown on taxdodging and corruption.
For all the outpouring of anger in Athens the truth, of course, is that the Greeks brought this on themselves. After joining the euro in 2001, Greek salaries rocketed from an average of around £8,000 to almost £20,000. Lavish pay and perks became commonplace in the bloated public sector, while pastry chefs, radio announcers, hairdressers and masseurs in steam baths were classified among more than 600 professions allowed to retire at 50, with a state pension of 95 per cent of their last working year’s earnings, because of the ‘arduous and perilous’ nature of their work.
The rackets go on. Only last month union workers at the state electricity company negotiated a six euro a day meal allowance – which also applied to union officials who did not even work there.