During the ten years of crisis that devastated Greece, the Greeks had to face a good number of prejudices: lazy, cheaters, thieves… Qualifiers that hurt. The President of the Eurogroup, the Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem even said: “You can’t spend all the money on booze and women and then ask for help“He never apologized.
Three years later, the crisis is announced as over, but the Greeks have not forgotten. For Adonis, very active in the demonstrations during these years of crisis, these prejudices are dangerous. We met him in the protest neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens.
“If you take up the articles of the time in the European media, which described how lazy the Greeks were and lived only on subsidies from Europe, and you replace the Greek word by Jew, homosexual or black, we clearly fall subject to anti-racism laws.
Yorgos, a debonair retiree, is less severe. He is sipping his coffee in the working-class district of Kypseli. “Let them talk. I never took them seriously. For them, we are lazy and crafty? Well too bad, let them believe it!“
She grandson doesn’t mince his words: “Sloth is a misrepresentation. In Greece, we have very heavy taxation, very high VAT and low wages compared to the rest of Europe. It’s not easy to make ends meet and pay taxes!“
Adonis agrees. For this activist, these prejudices had a very specific purpose: “The most common prejudice at this time of crisis, and which still persists in a certain way, is that the Greeks lived on credit. They weren’t working, they weren’t producing, they were taking credits and it was time they paid the bill. Anyone who has lived in Greece for even two years knows that the young people couldn’t do it. We had a very, very high unemployment rate. And for the older ones it was worse.”
What angers the Greeks is that these prejudices are wrong. According to all the polls, the Greeks are those who work the most in Europe, for wages among the lowest. And salaries and equal situation, employees and retirees pay at source about 30% more taxes than the French.