The European Commission has for the first time placed Greece among the countries where it sees risks in achieving the goal of social convergence. Next year it will prepare a detailed report for each of the 10 countries in this category, which also includes Bulgaria, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Luxembourg.
What caused this unpleasant ranking, made in the context of the reports of the second part of the European Semester last Wednesday? A deterioration or stagnation at levels far from the EU average in the indicators of excessive housing burden, unmet medical needs, the percentage of the population at risk of poverty in general, and especially for children, the low efficiency of social transfers in reducing poverty, and income inequality.
Also, the social indexes for Greece record the persistent challenges in the labor market for young people and women, and the low and decreasing participation of adults in learning.
Overall, the picture that emerges for Greece from the social scoreboard, on which Brussels relies, has many dark spots. True, this country lost valuable time and has taken many steps backward, due to the bailout process.
It is also very likely that some of these indicators, such as that concerning the share of the population at poverty risk, are negatively affected by the proportionally large tax evasion.
On the other hand, there are indeed areas where social problems are structural, such as the low participation of women in the labor market, or have become acute in recent years, like the high cost of housing. It is also true that the distance from the EU average income remains large. As the head of the Parliamentary Budget Office, Professor Yiannis Tsoukalas, said last week, “Greece needs a generation to get back on its feet.”
In any case, these daily problems are increasingly shaping the agenda of political life, as the country moves away from the priorities of the first post-bailout period, such as fiscal stabilization and achieving investment grade.