https://www.dw.com/en/greece-and-germany-from-anger-to-economic-potential/a-70154970
Germany is the official guest country at the 2024 Thessaloniki International Fair this weekend. It's a major change from a few years back when the two countries were at loggerheads during Greece's sovereign debt crisis.
In 2024, Greece has one of the strongest growth outlooks in Europe. Once seen as the "problem child" of the eurozone, Greece has turned things around and now expects real gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 2% this year.
This [debt to GDP] is higher than it was before the start of the sovereign debt crisis, simply because economic performance shrank by a quarter as a result of the crisis
After the immense downturn, Greece is still far from pre-crisis levels. Meanwhile ordinary people are very much fucked economically.
Even though the resulting economic success surpassed expectations, not everyone was happy. There was opposition, criticism and accusations of an alleged "sellout of public property" to foreign investors, from left-wing circles in particular. Economic expert Petrakis doesn't understand this attitude. "The accusation of a sellout when it comes to investments within the EU is senseless," he said. Petrakis pointed to the fact that the Fraport investment was a success, specifically because the Germans invested in smaller airports, thereby attracting even more visitors to Greece. He emphasized that it wasn't just the German investors who had benefited from the project, but also the local economies in all of the regions where Fraport is active.
The problem is not that some public property was sold, but rather that the profitable ones were sold, now generating money for foreign investors instead of keeping it in Greece. meanwhile society is footing the bill of non profitable infrastructure.
It must be said that, after watching the Germans dictate internal policy to Greece, I was surprised that it took so long for countries to start leaving the EU.