While many Greeks suffering through the country’s crushing economic crisis blame Germany for being the biggest instigator of austerity measures to go along with bailout loans, the number of Greeks heading there soared in the first six months of the year, data from the German statistics office showed.
Some 501,000 foreigners moved to Germany, the European Union’s dominant economy, between January and June 2012, a rise of 15 percent compared with the same period last year, the data showed. The number of Greeks moving there rose by 78 percent. The figure for Portugal and Spain went up by 53 percent over the same period.
There were about 295,000 Greeks living in Germany five years ago, but with Greece heading toward a sixth year of recession, the numbers are jumping rapidly. Germany grew modestly by 0.2 percent in the third quarter but with the Eurozone’s debt-laden members suffering deeply, the currency bloc as a whole was likely to have slid into recession, figures showed.
Still, many Greeks are finding work in Germany at far higher wages, while unemployment in Greece has hit a record high 25.4 percent, and 58 percent for those under 25, creating fears of a “lost generation” as the country’s young flee to other countries for a better future.
The statistics came amid a new round of rising tension between Greece and Germany, with protesters crashing a conference of German and Greek mayors in Thessaloniki, furious over comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s special envoy to Greece, Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, that only 1,000 Germans could do the work of the city’s 3,700 municipal employees. He said studies show local authority workers in Greece are less productive than those in Germany and efforts should be made to reduce the number of municipal employees.
(Source: Kathimerini)
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