Greek government-debt crisis countermeasures
[1][2][3] This led to a crisis of confidence, indicated by a widening of bond yield spreads and the cost of risk insurance on credit default swaps compared to the other countries in the Eurozone, most importantly Germany.
[4][5] The OECD estimated in August 2009, the size of the Greek black market to be around €65bn (equal to 25% of GDP), resulting each year in €20bn of unpaid taxes.
Undeclared income from self-employed Greeks (particularly doctors and lawyers) amounted to €28 billion in 2009, more than 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product that year.
[8] Furthermore, the Greek government has refused to look into a list of 1,991 potential tax evaders with Swiss HSBC bank accounts, it received in 2010 from former French finance minister Christine Lagarde.
Instead, Greek authorities arrested Kostas Vaxevanis, journalist and editor of the weekly magazine Hot Doc, who published the "Lagarde list".
[17] On 30 October the Greek prosecutors received a testimony from the former head of the Financial Crimes Unit (SDOE), Yiannis Kapeleris, that former finance minister Giorgos Papakonstantinou (serving the office from October 2009 until June 2011) never asked him to carry out a detailed investigation into the Lagarde list, and after he had reported the first 10 cases of irregularities to Papakonstantinou he was never instructed to continue searching for other irregular cases nor to open up detailed investigations.
[18] As the wife of a former Economic and Finance minister also appeared on the Lagarde list, a parliamentary committee also ordered this particular case to be investigated in full details on 8 November.
By January 2017, taxpayers were only granted tax-allowances or deductions when payments were made electronically, with a "paper trail" of the transactions that the government could easily audit.
[25][26] Numerous businesses were required by law to install a Point of sale (POS) device to enable them to accept payment by credit or debit card by 28 July 2017.
[27] Transparency International, an independent corruption monitoring NGO, found that 13% of Greeks paid fakelaki (bribery in the form of envelopes with cash donations) in 2009, which was estimated to account for €787 million in yearly payments.
[7] At the same time it was estimated that roughly €1 billion was paid by companies in bribes to public institutions for avoiding bureaucratic rules or to get other benefits.
When calculating all sorts of corruption in Greece, the total amount is estimated to be roughly €3.5 billion per year (equal to 1.75% of the Greek GDP).
2) It "strengthened investor protections by requiring greater immediate and annual disclosure of material related-party transactions", and 3) it "enhanced its insolvency process by abolishing the conciliation procedure and introducing a new rehabilitation proceeding".
[31] When the first three austerity packages had been negotiated and agreed upon from February to May 2010, they featured a total fiscal tightening of €41 billion of which €28bn was related to 2010–11 and the remaining €13bn scheduled for 2012–14.
The package emerged after the rapidly rise of Greek/German 10-year debt yield spread and the downgrading of Greek economy by all United States of America's nationally recognized statistical rating organizations.
[35][36] So, amid new fears of bankruptcy, the Greek parliament passed the "Economy Protection Bill", which was expected to save another €4.8 billion.
The Third austerity package came as a result of First Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece known as memorandum that was announced by Greek prime minister on 23 April 2010 and was signed on 2 May 2010.
[38] Actions included sale of 4000 government-owned companies, limits on "13th and 14th month" salaries, a new rise of VAT from 5% to 5.5%, from 10% to 11% and from 21% to 23% and other cuts to public employee benefits, pension Reform[39] and tax increases.
The Seventh austerity package emerged as a result of negotiation of Greece with creditors for the definition of a new economic program, the mid-term plan 2013–2016.
[44] The main part of the bill was voted on 7 November 2012 and includes labour market reforms and budgetary changes such as the total abolition of 13th and 14th month salaries among them.
The Eleventh austerity package included the bill that concerned the third bailout agreement between Greece and the 'quartet' of creditors (EU, ECB, ESM and IMF).
[53] The twelfth austerity package voted in October 2015 and includes the required measures to unlock a tranche of loans worth 2 billion euros.
Charitable foundations that used to fund educational programmes have taken a big hit themselves in their bank deposits and have now shifted to paying for soup kitchens on the streets of Athens.
remarked one appalled BBC journalist, before observing: "You do not measure a people's ability to survive in percentages of Gross Domestic Product.
[84] The suicide rate in Greece used to be the lowest in Europe,[82] but by March 2012 it had increased by 40%;[85] Dimitris Christoulas, a 77-year-old pensioner, shot himself outside the Greek parliament in April because the austerity measures had "annihilated all traces for my survival".
[82][86] Patients with chronic conditions attending treatment at state hospitals in Athens are told to bring their own prescription drugs.
[87] In June the previous year, at the time of the Greek parliaments approval of the fourth austerity package, an independent United Nations official had cautioned that this additional package of austerity in Greece could potentially pose a violation of human rights, if it were implemented without careful consideration to the population's need for "food, water, adequate housing and work under fair and equitable conditions".
[89] In February 2012, it was reported that 20,000 Greeks had been made homeless during the preceding year, and that 20 per cent of shops in the historic city centre of Athens were empty.
[90] The same month, Poul Thomsen, a Danish IMF official overseeing the Greek austerity programme, warned that ordinary Greeks were at the "limit" of their toleration of austerity, and he called for a higher International recognition of "the fact that Greece has already done a lot fiscal consolidation, at a great cost to the population";[91] and moreover cautioned that although further spending cuts were certainly still needed, they should not be implemented rapidly, as it was crucial first to give some more time for the implemented economic reforms to start to work.
[92] Prominent UK economist Roger Bootle summarised the state of play at the end of February 2012: Since the beginning of 2008, Greek real GDP has fallen by more than 17pc.
