EU donors and international companies face huge obstacles in making investment in Greece work, even if billions of euros flow back to the stricken economy, one of the EU΄s top economic official said earlier this week. The European Union aims to invest 20 billion euros in Greece by 2013 and a Greek privatization program is designed to raise another 19 billion by 2015, with industries from food to tourism potentially lucrative investment draws.
But foreign investors must grapple with confusing bureaucracy and a legal system that takes years to deliver rulings, complicating efforts to revive economic growth, said the EU commissioner for regional policy, Johannes Hahn.
Yet imposing yet more foreign control on the euro zone΄s most indebted state or creating a European commissioner for Greece is not the answer, Hahn told Reuters in an interview.
"The Greek authorities have to deliver. We cannot have a commissioner imposing laws from above," Hahn said at his office at the European Commission in Brussels. "We are talking about the initiatives needed from the Greeks, about creating an investment climate. It΄s not just about money anymore," said the Austrian, who has made multiple trips to Athens.
Greece won a reprieve from bankruptcy last week when the EU and the International Monetary Fund approved a 130 billion euro ($174.5 billion) bailout, following a 110 billion euro rescue deal in 2010, the terms of which forced deep spending cuts on Athens but failed to resolve its debt crisis.
Reflecting anger at Athens΄ broken promises on confronting tax evasion and completing privatizations nearly two years into its first rescue package, dozens of officials from EU member states will set up in Greece on a permanent basis over the coming months to make sure it meets targets linked to the new bailout.
Along with the "troika" of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF that assess Greece΄s progress in meeting the goals linked to the first bailout, the EU already has a task force in Athens to help reform the economy.
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