Greece’s financial rescue came too late to save Dimitri’s business, but the 40-year-old reserved his anger not for the man who eventually signed off on more economic pain, but the creditors who dictated the brutal terms.
“I’m not disappointed because the prime minister couldn’t have done anything else. Leaving the euro would have been much worse,” the cafe owner said as he prepared iced coffee for his two customers. “I’m already closing next month. My income has fallen by half since 2010.”
Like many Greeks battered by five years of austerity, he struggled to grasp why other European countries were calling in debts that even the IMF had admitted were too crippling to be paid back.
Illustration: Mountain people
“When the Germans give you money, they don’t just want it back, they want punishment. Is that the world we want to live in?” he asked, after an overnight summit of European leaders agreed on terms to prevent Greece from crashing out of the single currency.
The talks began in a mood of Greek defiance after a resounding no to more austerity in a snap referendum called by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Less than a week later, after creditors made clear they would rather see Greece leave the euro than give ground, he accepted all their demands and was forced to make even deeper concessions.
Although almost no one in Greece likes the last-minute deal or thinks it is fair, it has still been welcomed with quiet relief after nearly two weeks of staring down economic disaster. The country has been in painful limbo after the government banned payments abroad, shut banks and limited cash withdrawals from automated teller machines to 60 euros per day.
The price of a deal is tax increases, spending cuts and siphoning off billions of euros of assets into a fund to reassure creditors that their bills would be paid. It is almost certain to bring more misery to a country where austerity has crippled the economy and left 50 percent of young people without work, but there was widespread fear that returning to the drachma would be even more damaging.
“A bad agreement is still better than leaving the euro,” said Giorgios Kommata, a 53-year-old doctor.
His daughter, Chrysa, a 24-year-old student home for the summer, fears she might not be able to find a job in Greece for a decade.
“We wouldn’t have been prepared for the impact of leaving the euro, but I’m not satisfied with what is going on,” she said. “Both ways are hard. I want to come back, but with the situation I don’t think it will be possible before my 40s.”
Nikos Drossos, 31, who runs a lingerie shop, said solidarity had helped some of those struggling in Greece.
“People understand the situation, no one has asked for the rent, to pay the bills,” he said, adding that he would accept austerity, but was upset that the government’s floundering had made the economy and possibly the package even worse.
“The problem is they went into this without a Plan B, so it was a game lost from the beginning,” he said. “If they didn’t have an argument or a different proposal to give to the Eurogroup, then what negotiating could they do?”
For businesses already struggling with years of slowing demand and a shrinking economy, the tax increases spelt out in the new deal mean more pain. The owner of any business, however big or small, will now have to pay corporate taxes a year in advance.
“We already paid 55 percent tax in advance and now we have to pay 28 percent more on non-existent income,” Konstantinos Chantizaridis said, standing outside his childrenswear factory. “But we have to do it to support the national economy.”
For all it is set to cost him, he thought the government had made the right choice.
“At least with this environment, we know more or less what it means. If we’d gone back to the drachma, it would be very different to going back to the drachma we had in 2000,” he said.
Some government critics thought Greece had not done enough to look for alternative sources of bailout funds and said they should have done more to court powers beyond Europe.
“I feel betrayed by my country for many years now,” said Savvas Manousiadis, 52, a car mechanic who had his own workshop before the crisis. “I want us to look elsewhere, especially Russia and China. I would like to have a taste of something new. Everything is settled by the system — even Tsipras is part of the system, because there is no way he would have risen to become prime minister if not.”
Even as everyone accepted that a return to the drachma would be difficult for Greece, some of Tspiras’ critics said that he should have put national pride and fiscal independence before short-term pain.
“I am disappointed, I feel embarrassed,” said 80-year-old Takis, drinking a morning coffee in a working-class district of north Athens. “If we still want to be proud of being Greek, it would be a good thing to make a scene, say no and leave the eurozone.”
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