Greeks resigned to a hard, bitter future whatever deal is reached with Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/11/greeks-future-europe-austerity-eurozone

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Greece has become so gloomy that even escapism no longer sells, the editor of the celebrity magazine OK! admits. “All celebrity magazines have to pretend everything is great, everyone is happy and relaxed, on holiday. But it is not,” says Nikos Georgiadis.

Advertising has collapsed by three-quarters, the rich and famous are in hiding because no one wants to be snapped enjoying themselves – and even if OK! did have stories, a ban on spending money abroad means it is running out of the glossy Italian paper that the magazine is printed on.

“We have celebrities calling and asking us not to feature them because they are afraid people will say ‘we are suffering and, look, you are having fun on the beach’,” Georgiadis says. “One did a photoshoot but then refused to do the interview. They don’t want to be in a lifestyle magazine.”

It might be easy to mock the panic of Greece’s gilded classes, if the only thing affected was the peddling of aspiration and envy. But the magazine provides jobs to many people whose lives are a world away from the ones they chronicle, and like thousands of others across Greece they are on the line as the government makes a last-ditch attempt to keep the country in the euro.

“If we go back to the drachma, they told us the magazine will close. It’s possible we won’t have jobs to go to on Monday,” Georgiadis says bluntly, as negotiations with Greece’s European creditors headed towards the endgame.

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras pushed a €13bn austerity package through parliament early on Saturday, overcoming a rebellion by his own MPs and sealing a dramatic and unexpected transformation from charismatic opponent of cuts to their most dogged defender.

It seemed like nothing so much as a betrayal of those he had called out in their millions less than a week earlier to reject an almost identical package of painful reforms. Greece’s creditors had soon made clear though that they were not ready to improve bailout terms, even to keep the country in the euro.

And so after painful days of cash shortages, closed banks, dwindling supplies of anything imported, from medicine to cigarettes, and mounting fear, the extraordinary U-turn was met with more resignation than anger.

“It’s very hard but in this time we don’t have any other solution,” says Poppi Papadopolou in the nearly deserted cafe that she has run for three decades, less than a week after she had cast her own vote with Tsipras and against more austerity. “We must be flexible.”

The last five years have been a time of retrenchment, and the last two weeks ones of bare survival. The lights and air conditioning are off, and the trays of cutlet, sausage, bacon, Greek salads and other sandwich fillers that were once kept brimful boast only enough for a single lunch.

“Until things go back to normal, we have costs but no income,” she says, as her sole customer slowly sips a coffee in the dim interior. She had learned to be happy when she could break even; now she is raiding savings that are all but gone, and reckons the drachma would finish them off.

That is a possibility which the new austerity plan has not yet entirely banished. The proposals have been welcomed by many but not all of Greece’s European partners; German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble “believes Athens’s plans are insufficient and is against further talks”, the newspaper Bild reports.

Marianthi Velentza, a stationery shop owner who says she had to let her staff go and now works twice as hard in her 40s as she did 20 years ago, says she never expected the referendum would stave off more austerity.

“People are a bit romantic, and thought that it would be a strong argument for a different arrangement with Europe,” she says. “I thought it was more or less a game, to get the bailout deal without public disappointment.”

She has become used to fielding her daughter’s questions about why they don’t have holidays or so many new clothes now, even if she finds it painful, but fears that crashing out of the European Union would cast a longer shadow over her child’s future.

“It would affect the business: but it’s not only about me, it’s also about my kid. I don’t want her to have problems going abroad to work or study, getting visas like we used to.”

One of the big concerns of the creditors scrutinising the deal is whether Greek authorities will follow through on what they have promised. It is a concern echoed by many businesspeople at home, turned cynical by years of unmet promises to cut corruption, tax fraud and red tape. “The problem is, will they actually fulfil it?” asks Ramesh Basra, owner of travel agency GR Bollywood, a 22-year-old business that has slowly unravelled in the crisis.

He laid off all seven employees in January and runs what’s left of the company alone, frustrated by the inability of his adopted homeland to cash in on its assets, but convinced the industry will eventually recover. “It is the best destination in the world: the beaches, the climate,” he says. “I like Greece even with all these problems. I will stay until the last battle.”

Basra even hopes that his business might eventually benefit a little from the package if promises to cut red tape and tax avoidance are made good. Cheating is so rampant at the moment that it effectively penalises honest firms, other entrepreneurs say as well.

“I would prefer a stricter system, because it is for the good of our country. Greeks are specialists in avoiding taxes,” says Thanasis Pouros, who owns an upmarket gym in a smart part of the city, where he says the economic crisis has been the only topic of conversation for weeks, and where now several clients have stopped coming to class. “We were all expecting that the time would come when the country would have to give answers for the wealth that some people created too easily.”

Among many Greeks there is a sense of frustration that their lives are being curtailed to repay loans that they feel bought little for ordinary citizens. Much of the cash was siphoned off by corrupt officials, and the last few years of cuts have served only to pay interest to creditors, they say.

“The government failed the country, they made money from the country,” says florist Vygontzas Giorgos. “Now we should be asking: who did you give money to, who is responsible for the stolen money? It’s not that we don’t want to pay: it’s that we don’t have the money.”