Greek youth, shaped by debt crisis, plan to vote for stability

Days before this Sunday’s elections in Greece, three young women with piercings and tongue-in-cheek T-shirts sitting outside a hipster coffee shop in an Athens neighborhood best known as a center of anarchist fervor said they wanted stability.

“Money matters — you can’t live without money,” says Mara Katsitou, 22, a college student who grew up during the country’s disastrous financial crisis and hoped one day to open a pharmacy. “There’s nothing more important to anyone than the economy.”

As a result, she said, she would cast her vote for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, the square, conservative prime minister who graduated from Harvard, who loves cycling and who, polls show, will win convincingly on Sunday in seconds . national election. With Mr Mitsotakis – who is also the son of a former prime minister – Ms Katsitou said she “definitely had a better chance”. About a third of young voters like her feel the same way, polls show.

After a period of impressionable years amid so much panic, desperation and humiliation during the decade-long financial crisis that erupted in 2010 – and which brought the Greek economy to a standstill – many of Greece’s Depression-era children have grown up thinking that they have no interest in ever returning back.

In many circles, youthful radicalism has given way to unexpected pragmatism, a desire for prosperity and a steady hand, and a tendency to overlook or at least mute outrage over some of the scandals that have dogged Mr. Mitsotakis.

In recent days, a shipwreck that may have killed more than 600 migrants has raised new questions about the Mitsotakis government’s harsh measures to curb the arrival of migrants. The wiretapping of an opposition leader by state intelligence and Mr Mitsotakis’ consolidation of the Greek media have raised concerns about the erosion of democratic standards. A train accident that killed 57 people in February revealed the shabby state of key Greek infrastructure, for which he apologized.

But for Greeks, including an increasing number of younger Greeks, polls show that all of these issues pale in comparison to the country’s economic stability and fortunes.

Mr Mitsotakis’ government has boosted growth to twice the eurozone average by cutting taxes and debt, as well as increasing digitalisation, minimum wages and pensions. Large multinationals invest in the country. Tourism is skyrocketing. The country is paying back its creditors ahead of schedule, increasing the likelihood that rating agencies will lift Greek bonds out of junk status.

“It’s all about jobs, about, you know, increasing disposable income and bringing in a lot of investment and growing the economy much faster,” said Mr. Mitsotakis in a recent interview. “This was always my bet, and I think we delivered, if you look at the numbers.”

The 2010 Greek debt crisis was a searing national catastrophe. Humiliating bailouts linked to seemingly endless austerity measures cut household income by a third and unemployment skyrocketed as hundreds of thousands of businesses collapsed.

At the height of the crisis, in 2013, nearly one in three Greeks were unemployed, and many were disheartened after years of violent protests, with demonstrators clashing with police in clouds of tear gas on the streets of Athens and other cities. Scenes of the most desperate people dragging through bins for food – once unheard of – shocked the majority of Greeks struggling to make ends meet.

“We still have a deep legacy of 10 years of crisis,” acknowledged Mr. Mitsotakis in the interview. “Not many people realized how painful the crisis was – we lost 25 percent of our” gross domestic product.

Mr. Mitsotakis, the standard-bearer of the New Democracy party, has won over a significant portion of the generation that grew up in that era, increasing his support among voters aged 17 to 24 by three points to 33 percent.

Equally telling is that support among young voters for his left-wing opponent, former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Syriza party, has collapsed from 38 percent since the 2019 election, when Mr Mitsotakis defeated him, from 38 percent to 24 per cent.

In a first election in May, Mr Mitsotakis’s party defeated Syriza by 20 points, but it was not enough majority to lead a one-party government. Instead of forging a coalition, Mr Mitsotakis opted for new elections. With a new, more favorable electoral law that gives a bonus of seats to the leading voter, he now hopes to score a landslide victory that will allow him to rule alone.

All in all, Mr. Tsipras more than 20 points behind Mr. Mitsotakis.

That is despite his attempts to portray Mr Mitsotakis as an undemocratic, arrogant and irresponsible strongman who he says has overseen a “massive redistribution of wealth from the many to the few” in his four years in power.

Of course, not all young voters support Mr. Mitsotakis. Many complain that the prosperity that should kick-start their lives makes things so expensive that they cannot leave their homes.

Not all economic indicators are good either. Greece still has the highest public debt in the European Union and is the second poorest country in the European Union after Bulgaria. Tax evasion is still common.

Mr Tsipras has tried to convince young voters that he, not Mr Mitsotakis, is the real driver not only of change, but also of stability. He has promised financial support, including better health benefits, though it remains unclear how those will be funded.

“We will fight so that the hope of justice and prosperity for all is not lost in this country, for a fair society and prosperity for all,” Tsipras said at a campaign event in the western city of Patra this week.

Some voters, suffering from rising prices and exponentially rising rents, support him.

“The crisis is not over yet; it’s still there,” said Grigoris Varsamis, 46, who said his record store’s electricity bills were skyrocketing and he would vote for Mr Tsipras.

But there is little doubt that Mr. Tsipras, a former communist funeral pyre who reigned in the closing years of the financial crisis, is tainted by an enduring association with the pain of the time.

In 2015, under his leadership, Greeks voted to reject Europe’s draconian aid package, and Greece was nearly expelled from the eurozone. Social unrest returned and there was increasing talk of ‘Grexit’, referring to Greece leaving the Eurozone. Many young Greeks who grew up at that time feel marked by the Syriza experience.

Grigoris Kikis, 26, an award-winning chef at the Upon restaurant in Athens, recalls that the financial crisis coincided with his attempt to break into the restaurant world as a 13-year-old, volunteering in kitchens after school.

While restaurants closed and his father worried about paying his workers, the chefs around him worried about budgets for produce, meat, plates and glasses. If they wanted to try a new dish, they could afford to try it just once.

Today, Mr. Kikis runs a popular Athens bistro with a 300-label wine list, in-house roasting machines, and an eclectic menu with plates that have been tried 25 times before making it.

“The restaurant is packed every day,” he said, explaining that he would vote for Mr. Mitsotakis to keep it that way. “Many people my age care most about the economy. They say there are more opportunities and higher salaries, and maybe people from abroad want to work in Greece because things have changed for the better.”

The same goes for Nikos Therapos, 29, a sustainability consultant. When he was 16, he said, drastic cuts in government budgets cost his mother, a kindergarten teacher, her job. His father’s business, in the hard-hit construction industry, also shrank.

“I remember very clearly not being so optimistic about my professional career,” he said.

In 2015, while studying business administration in Brussels, Greece was embroiled in intense political and social unrest. Mr. Therapos remembered that his fellow students avoided him in tutorials.

“I was considered the lazy Greek, even though they knew nothing about me,” he said. “It was really unfair to me and my generation.”

But the past four years Mr. Therapos said there had been a change.

“I can’t say we’re back to normal for the simple reason that I’ve never known normalcy,” he said. But for the first time, he said, he felt “confident in our future.”

Many of his more left-wing friends had also switched to Mr. Mitsotakis, Mr. Therapos said, because they want a “stable and sustainable economic system.”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Mitsotakis agreed.

“In the end,” he said, “Greece is no longer a problem for the eurozone. I think this will bring relief to a lot of people.”