Greece

The RSF report comes at a crunch time to note what other international organizations have expressed earlier: concerns about the treatment of journalists by the Greek Police, restrictions on coverage of the immigration issue, and direct or indirect effort of the Greek government to control the flow of information for political gain.

The political platform of the Greek New Right, which has embedded authoritarian attitudes cultivating an anti-liberal sub-culture to the party’s voters, is in accordance with several European conservative movements like in Hungary, Austria, or Czechia.

INESS created a brand new index called Health for Money, which rates healthcare in 26 countries, having also money in focus. The index touches also academia, measuring number of quotable medical papers from the country, or international rankings of faculties of medicine.

Financial crisis with its accompanying factors, including the high rates of unemployment, tax increase and sever cuts in public services led to the increasing popularity of the radical left-wing parties in Greece and Spain, while not rendering the same result in Portugal.

In considering the extent to which the state should be relied upon to promote social cohesion and virtue, one must keep in mind the potential associated pitfalls as well as the other possible means to accomplish the same desired ends.

The Greeks have voted and widely approved the course of Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA-party (35,5%, -0,8). It is noteworthy that the decision for the left-wing alliance reveals that the Greek voters predominantly want to stick to traditional values and their societal structures, rather than giving a chance to reform-orientated powers.

“An experiment of austerity” and “blackmailing” are just a few of the many fanciful epithets employed by the members of SYRIZA and socialists to create a “syrizophrenic” picture of what is going on. However, the true reasons of and solutions for the crisis have already been known for a long time.

Following the Greek tragedy, there is a search for ways to prevent crises of similar magnitude from happening. Different state representatives are coming up with different solutions on how best handle such situations. What the eurozone needs are more voices advocating for the benefits of competition.

The euro indeed plays a major role in the Greek drama, but the ultimate cause of the Greek economic turmoil lies somewhere else. The real problem is that the architects of the euro used it as a turbo that was meant to speed up the integration engine of the eurozone, while encouraging other European countries to do so as well.

In the last five years, Piraeus Bank has lost 97% of its value and Eurobank (indeed, an apt name) an astounding 99.8% of the value. Their market value is currently five times lower that the market value of the Uber company. However, the Stock Exchange has not reached the historic low of the year 2012.