Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis has claimed success in Greece’s ‘great wager’ regarding its endeavour to secure the return of a generation of young and productive Greeks who had left during the economic crisis.
The “brain gain”, as it has been coined, has been an endeavour by the government to bring back the many Greeks who left the country during the crisis, with Marinakis expressing in his briefing to the press on Tuesday (Greek time) that their wager has appeared to have been won.
Marinakis addressed the media on the subject, as reported by Athens-Macedonian News Agency, citing a new study by the National Documentation Centre conducted in October on a sample of citizens who had emigrated abroad during the crisis and returned to Greece in recent years.
“Based on Eurostat data announced by the Finance Ministry in March 2024, of the 680,000 who had left the country – as calculated by the Bank of Greece – more than 350,000 have now returned – more than half, in other words,” he said.
The Greek government spokesperson highlighted that, according to the results of the survey, 46 per cent of the Greeks who returned now work in a Greek company, organisation or service, while including the employees of multinationals active in Greece and the self-employed or freelance workers raises this percentage to 83 per cent.
“In fact, seven per cent of them work remotely in companies or organisations abroad, which contributes to the Greek economy in yet another way, which was not usual in the past,” Marinakis said.
He also noted that the return of this important asset for the country did not happen by chance, crediting it to the reforms and changes made by the New Democracy government since 2019.
