Prague, July 16 (CTK) – Yorgos Ilios, a Czech Greek who runs a Greek restaurant in Prague, has in the past weeks received a number of phone calls from his compatriots who want to leave the indebted Greece and seek a job abroad, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes yesterday.
Ilios, who was born in the Czech Republic, says his acquaintances from Greece ask him whether he could offer a job of a chef, water or barman to them, because “there are simply no jobs, or too few of them, in Greece.”
The experience of other Greeks who run businesses in the Czech Republic is similar, HN writes.
Dimitris Nedelkos, who runs another Greek tavern in Prague, is to be soon joined by his niece and nephew, who will move in from Greece.
Nedelkos with his family left Greece in 1997.
“I could not see any bright future for my sons in Greece,” he told HN, and added that Greece still does not offer any great prospects now.
Both Ilios and Nedelkos are interested in the turbulent developments in Greece.
“I disagree with the [financial] cuts [on condition of which Athens is to be lent money]. True, the Greek government made certain mistakes, but a number of mistakes were also made by the whole EU, as well as NATO,” Ilios is quoted as saying.
In his opinion, Greece should have left the EU long ago.
Kyriakos Xanthopoulos, a chef in a Greek pub in Ostrava, north Moravia, blames the EU for having intentionally driven Greece into the crisis in order to invest and massively buy property in Greece.
His scepticism is not shared by Ioannis Asarlidis, who studied at University of Economics in Prague and now runs a Greek restaurant in the Czech capital.
“The Greeks will manage to have the money circulated. They will spend it and set the economy in motion, because the economy depends on spending. I do not see Greece in so black colours at all,” Asarlidis told HN, referring to the international loan Greece is to receive to tackle its debt.
