All fronts open By Antonis D. Papagiannidis Starting today, just past mid-August, the European Commission fresh-from-the-oven Recovery and Resilience Task Force that will allow for the preparation and implementation of the Next Generation EU programmes is supposed to be on foot and ready to go. Coming on the step of the EU Summit, July17th/21st  decision over the 750 bn eu NGEU, this new instrument is ensconced in the Commission Secretariat-General and will be  working under the authority of Commission President [...]

Rough waters, once more by Antonis D. Papagiannidis Two months after Greece and Italy had signed an agreement for the establishment-and- delimitation of their respective EEZs (superposed on the pre-existant one over their continental shelves, dating back to 1977/78), Athens succeeded in signing an agreement with Cairo for a – partial – maritime zones delimitation south-westwards. Starting from the eastern tip of Crete at the 26th meridian (carefully avoiding by a large margin to encroach Libyan claims) and all the way [...]

No news in August? Try again! by Antonis D. Papagiannidis Summer months are supposed to last longer, to allow for an ebb in public life tensions. After all, Americans and the British are known to speak of the silly season, while the quote of Umberto Eco goes:” there is no news in August”. August 2020 may well give the lie to such received wisdom – at least in so far tense relations between Greece and Turkey are concerned and allies [...]

Eastern Mediterranean: when Turkish adventurism meets with global consolidation in energy by Antonis D. Papagiannidis Turkish geopolitical adventurism in the Eastern Mediterranean, lately perceived as aggressiveness by Greece (and Cyprus) and as an increasingly disturbing factor for major players in the energy game, does not move in otherwise calm waters. The storm caused by the Covid-19 pandemic – and the resulting deep fall in energy demand – is causing ripple effects of a different nature in the region. The most [...]

Double jeopardy, twice by Antonis D. Papagiannidis The “Generation Next” EU Summit, spread all over the last weekend and still underway on Monday, was quite a trial for Greece. Along with the Southeners of Europe - Italy, Spain, Portugal but also France - who laboured under the strain of the Covid-19 epidemic and its heavy impact on their already-fragile economies, heavily dependent on tourism. Greece had to live through the suspense of the negotiations over the extent and (most importantly) [...]

By Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist at the IMD World Competitiveness Center and Salvatore Cantale, Professor of Finance at the Institute for Management and Development (IMD) In comparing coronavirus to war times, hold onto the idea of the collaboration and progress to come The most devastating war in terms of casualties was WWII, with some official estimates reporting 85 million dead. (COVID-19 has so far killed almost 180,000 people worldwide with 2.6 million cases.) Yet, out of one of the darkest moments [...]

Is the endgame of Greek-Turkish relations underway? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis A long-awaited decision of Turkey’s Supreme administrative Court annulled the (1934) Mustapha Kemal edict making a museum of the Hagia Sophia 6th century Byzantine cathedral, that had been converted to a mosque following the (1453) Ottoman conquest of Constantinople: a deeply symbolic move of diving into the multi-layered past so as to cut the continuity of a secular Turkey. Promptly on the step of the Court decision, an edict [...]

26th economia Student Contest: Tourism-Destination Greece 1st Prize |  Individual Essay Tourism in Greece: current challenges Ioannis Melandinos   1.     Introduction Greece welcomed more than 33 million tourists in 2018, triple its population. Tourism represented 11,7% of Greece’s GDP in 2018 while it accounted for more than 16,7% of the total employment. Greece tourism proved a robust and resilient sector during the crisis and managed to constantly improve year over year. Greece has experienced exponential growth in recent years, a [...]