To Athens with tough love, Greek Londoners speak up about the crisis

 By Simona Sikimic

Where do London’s entrepreneurial and business-savvy Greeks stand on Brexit and Grexit?

Oh the woes of Greece! Once a much-loved tourist destination for British, if little thought about outside the summer months, Greece’s fate has become the hot topic of this young but troubled decade.
Since fessing up to “severe irregularities” in its finances back in January 2010, Greece has been on the brink of collapse. Athens has already required a string of bailouts and as it faces a sixth year of deep recession it looks like might require yet more.
The problems in Greece have pushed up anti-EU sentiment across the continent and have sparked fiery debate about whether everyone would be better off with Greece in or out of the Eurozone, and indeed, whether the Eurozone should exist at all. Nowhere has this been more apparent that the UK and Greece both rumoured to be heading for their respective Brexit and Grexit.

But what do the Greeks in London make of the mother nation’s pain? And how do they feel about weathering the storm in the relative haven of the UK?
“Britain has proven that it is the best positioned in terms of the EU,” says Penelope Sacorafou, founder of Fox&Squirrel, a cultural tour operator in London.
“Its approach of one foot in, one foot out is working. Cutting ties completely would not be beneficial but being 100% loyal would not be beneficial either.
“Europe’s answer to securing its future success and to overcoming its various challenges is to have and ever greater union. But, while this might be a nice idea, and maybe it could work in the long term, it needs much more than just an economic basis. That just isn’t happening.”

“Britain has proven that it is the best positioned in terms of the EU,” Penelope Sacorafou

Athens-born Alina Dheere-Babaletsos, a graduate of Goldsmith’s University, has similarly lost patience with the EU and thinks the UK is one of the few countries getting it right.
“I don’t believe in Europe anymore. Obviously I see what is going on in Greece – and I know that is a very complex situation and not just linked to the EU – but it shows that there is a fault in the overall system,” says Babaletsos. “Europe is an attractive ideal, and the sense of unity we are supposed to feel is nice, but it is not happening… At one point I think Europe will fall.”
The latest rumblings for an EU referendum issued by London mayor Boris Johnson and other Tory MPs have not worried then former web project manager, turn actress.

Boris Johnson in Athens as part of Olympic handover ceremony

“Europe is an attractive ideal, and the sense of unity we are supposed to feel is nice, but it is not happening… At one point I think Europe will fall.” Alina Babaletsos

“I’ve never seen Britain as very European. The UK never adopted the currency and Brits have benefitted from this…. As a city, London has not and I don’t think it will, suffer. It is still very multicultural, open and diverse. For me, it’s the best city in Europe and it will draw talented people in no matter what.”
Part of this openness is due to the relative ease of doing business and the UK’s straight-forward laws and regulations.
Half-British, half-Greek Sacorafou, may have spent most of her life in Cyprus, but when it came to deciding where to set up her business in 2008, she knew that despite the recession, it had to be London.
At the time, she was cooking up ideas of how to get young Arts graduates to work, and her guided cultural tours, which stress London’s fashion and cultural heritage, were designed to fill a gap in the shrivelling UK employment market.
“When I started, the Greeks were still lying about their own economy and I was responding to what was going on here as everyone was in a panic over Lehman Brothers going bust. I was actually working on getting Greek tourists over here and directing their attention to London and the tours.”

“I just can’t face the whole idea of corruption and legal uncertainty. You never know where you stand in Greece,” Stefanos

The Greek crisis would not appear for another year, but Sacorafou alongside many of her compatriots, suspected something was not quite right long before the bubble burst.
“Greek politicians treat their citizens like they’re treating their children. Because of this, there has been a real history of covering up and lying. We always knew they were lying, but we never knew the scale of the disaster,” she says.
Athens-born Stefanos, who did not want to give his last name, started working in the UK for a credit-risk assessment department right before the recession and now works as a freelance consultant.
While the 29-year-old wants to go back to Greece one day, he feels that its isolation from global markets, its corruption and stifling bureaucracy, continue to make it a difficult place to work and live.

Greek police wrestle protesters in Greece

“I just can’t face the whole idea of corruption and legal uncertainty. You never know where you stand in Greece, which makes it difficult to work or operate businesses,” says Stefanos. “It drives me mad, which is why I love the UK – it offers security because you know where you stands and you know what the law is.”
Not all that surprising then, that Stefanos says he is actually comforted by the site of German civil servants and technicians who have become a frequent fixture in his native Athens.
“There is a need for deep structural reform. I understand concerns that if change happens too quickly you won’t get it right … but it does have to happen,” says Stefanos.
Above all, the country needs to start focusing on growth, which has failed to materialise. The economy contracted by 7% this year and by around 20% since the crisis began, with unemployment now at record highs of 26%, public sector pay down by between 35 to 40% and pensions slashed by up to 60%.

“In Greece it is still very frowned upon to be an entrepreneur. It’s like a dirty word,” Sacorafou

In the midst of this, policy-makers are trying to work out how to wrangle Greece’s debt to 124% of GDP by 2020, although today it is 144% and rising, even after the latest round of haircuts . But while Europe has pledged to continued support, this is insufficient to get Greece out of its slump and many Greeks living in the UK recognise that more must be done to eradicate the negative perception of entrepreneurship and to boost private sector growth.
“In Greece it is still very frowned upon to be an entrepreneur. It’s like a dirty word,” says Sacorafou who is currently trying to open a subsidiary Fox&Squirrel branch in Greece’s second city of Salonica. “They’re many people who are interested in starting a business, but it’s not necessarily seen as a good thing. Unless Greeks get over that, the country will suffer.”
The consequences might be bad for Greece, but for now they’re proving to be good for London which has continued to pull in ambitious young Greeks.

The Queen with Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece at London charity gala. The Greek royal family has been in exile since the 1990s. They now live in London.

It is common for Greek entrepreneurs who can’t get around the red tape to register in London and then move back to Athens, explains Sacorafou.
Some small economic shoots, however, are starting to appear. Despite keeping the Euro, it is now cheaper to manufacturing in Greece than in Romania. This is boosting production and exports – albeit at a huge cost.
With things still likely to stay on edge in Greece and the Eurozone as a whole for years to come, it can be easy to get sucked into the madness, but some insist that in an increasingly globalised economy, it is no longer Greece, or Britain, or the EU that count.
“The EU intervention in Greece is just hitting the can down the road,” says Helena Overton, a native Greek, who has lived and worked in London shipping firms for more than 30 years and spends her time between Athens and the UK.

“At best this can all be a temporary solution, a pain killer,” Helena Overton

“It is good in the short term, but the debt is not sustainable and everyone is just frozen waiting for the German elections in 2013. At best this can all be a temporary solution, a pain killer.”
Britain and Greece leaving the EU, however, won’t impact her beloved shipping industry too hard, insists Overton.
The trade is a traditionally Greek one, but it has been diversifying for most of the last century. It is now a truly global business, paid in dollars and more dependent on world commodity prices than rumblings in thgreee Eurozone.
So for all the Greek tragedy, Greek Londoners are trying to look at the bigger long-term picture, as all of us wait anxiously for the next act of the unfolding Euro drama.
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