{"id":6693,"date":"2026-05-21T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=6693"},"modified":"2026-05-21T12:18:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:18:00","slug":"kyriakos-pierrakakis-to-ft-troikas-reforms-are-absolutely-necessary-for-the-greek-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=6693","title":{"rendered":"Kyriakos Pierrakakis to FT: Troika’s reforms are absolutely necessary for the Greek economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Absolutely necessary” is how economic reforms<\/b> implemented in Greece<\/b> during the memorandum period were described by Kyriakos Pierrakakis, <\/strong>talking to Financial Times.<\/b><\/p>\n

According to YPE\u0398O<\/b>, the measures imposed by the Troika were the basic precondition<\/b> for fiscal stabilization<\/b>and the current improved picture of the Greek economy.<\/b><\/p>\n

Kyriakos Pierrakakis stressed that many of these changes<\/b> made in the country, such as the strict austerity programme<\/b> and the reforms were necessary<\/b> for the country to regain its fiscal reliability<\/b> and return to a growth path.<\/p>\n

As he said, reforms were the “necessary condition” <\/b>for the current performance of the Greek economy.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he acknowledged that the management of the Greek crisis<\/b> by the Troika had both positive and negative aspects, noting that Europe must learn from the mistakes of that period.<\/p>\n

Greece is now in a completely different economic position compared to the crisis years, he pointed out.<\/p>\n

According to the Financial Times, the<\/b> country is among the few economies in the European Union<\/b> that are running a primary surplus, while public debt <\/b>is steadily declining.<\/p>\n

Estimates suggest that Greek debt will fall to 137.6% of GDP,<\/b> lower even than Italy’s.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Greece has managed to pay earlier<\/b> its IMF loans<\/b> and return to international markets, while its economic growth is now outpacing several major eurozone countries. These developments are presented by government officials and European institutions as a result of the reforms implemented since 2010.<\/p>\n

However, the period of memorandum of understanding continues to provoke intense debate because of the large<\/b> social costs <\/b>it has caused.<\/p>\n

The Greek economy lost about 25% of its GDP<\/b> between 2008 and 2013<\/b>, while unemployment<\/b> exploded to 26.6% in 2014<\/b> from about 8% before the crisis.<\/p>\n

Several of the key players of the time now admit that the policies<\/b> that were implemented had too much social impact.<\/p>\n

However, the Financial Times also points out that countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain,<\/b>which implemented difficult adjustment programmes over the past decade, are now showing better fiscal performance compared with larger Eurozone economies like Germany and France.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Absolutely necessary” he described the economic reforms implemented in Greece during the period of the memoranda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}