What are push factors of Greece?

Answer 1

One of the biggest push factors of Greece is their financial crisis, which started in the late 1990s, but has grown out of control currently. This is a brief synopsis of the crisis and the effects.

Over the years, Greece has been spending far much more than it owns, borrowing money which it could not pay back with it small tax income. When a financial crisis hit which was caused by the world economic problems, Greece could not afford to borrow money and pay off it debt. This revealed the size of the debt problem, as well as how much Athens (The capitol of Greece) has been lying about the financial status to the EU to retain their EU membership.

Currently, Greece owes 133% of its 305.6 billion GDP (Gross domestic Products), and due to the shrinkage of the economy in Greece, by next year, that will have increased to 140%. Even if the new bailout plan of increased taxes and reduced benefits, it will only cut the debt to 120% by 2020.

This could easily have a drastic effect on the world, for it Greece does indeed go bankrupt, then all the businesses, industries, institutions and countries that lent Greece money would know that they would never receive their money back and try to call in their loans, but with no avail, for Greece will have no money to pay back with. The businesses and institutions which lent to Greece will have given so much money, that they would not have been able to pay off their own debts, and soon fall under as well. This may not affect all places directly, however with the continuum of failing businesses, the economy will take such colossal damage that everywhere will take effect.

The only reason which Greece has not already fallen under and caused this chaos is due to an organisation called The Troika, which is a collaboration of the IMF, European central bank and the EU, who have all seen what could erupt from Greece's downfall and are trying to help Greece stay above. To do this, they have been giving Greece the funds to keep the debts off, all the while demanding the Greek government to create large budget cuts which will in turn keep the spending under control and hopefully stop the debt from increasing beyond control. The problem with this is that because so many of the Greek citizens are already experiencing economic troubles and communal cataclysm, they cannot sustain themselves if these cuts are introduced, which leads to riots on the street to prevent the plan from going into action. Already in Greece, the unemployment rate is more than 20%. In a country of 11 million, the Greek Orthodox Church claims to be feeding over 250,000 people a day, while more than 10,000 were out on the streets during one of the coldest winters in the past 50 years. Even before this crisis came to be, one fifth of Greece was below the poverty line, now, it is up to one third.

It is because of these issues that Greece is stuck. Either it can choose to not push the budget cuts, which would lead to being expelled from the EU, and the total end of Greece, which would also then lead to one of the greatest economic drops of all time, though it would be able to keep its citizens content for a small amount of time, or it can deal with the outraged citizens and its failing economy, but slowly reduce the debt and in 20 or so years be back on track, though most of it population would either have emigrated or died from the inability to move and inability to survive, thus creating an empty country.