Greece is booming again. This time, will it last? | Paul Taylor

Cranes are yet whirling implicit a long-blighted agelong of wasteland connected the Athens Riviera, conscionable 6 miles from the Acropolis, which has been a awesome of Greece’s rise, autumn and emergence again implicit the past 2 decades. Yet it remains to beryllium seen whether the country’s latest economical outpouring volition beryllium much durable than past spikes successful its humanities rhythm of roar and bust.

The Ellinikon operation site, soon to diagnostic luxury residences, the tallest flat gathering and largest buying mall successful the country, 2 hotels, a marina, a edifice analyzable and sports, recreational and taste facilities, is an ambivalent awesome of highest Greece.

To the authorities of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, darling of the European centre-right, the improvement is emblematic of the caller dynamism of the Greek system and the country’s attractiveness arsenic an concern location. To its critics, Ellinikon is conscionable different luxury real-estate task built by oligarchs for the super-rich and foreigners, connected nationalist onshore bought for a steal, portion mean Greeks proceed to spot their surviving standards stagnate and nationalist services decline.

The 6.2 sq km Ellinikon tract was location to the capital’s airdrome from the 1930s until 2001, erstwhile the gleaming, EU-subsidised Eleftherios Venizelos planetary airdrome opened to the eastbound of the metropolis successful clip for the spectacular 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

That was the past clip Greece was connected apical of the world. The state had conscionable joined the euro azygous currency – by fiddling the books, it aboriginal transpired – and a modernising socialist premier minister, Costas Simitis, was hailed arsenic the Tony Blair of the confederate Balkans. Greek was chic (remember the deed movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?). Tourism was booming. Even the nationalist shot squad had go improbable European champions.

Fast guardant a decennary and Greece was astatine stone bottommost aft defaulting connected its indebtedness and enduring 3 EU-IMF bailout programmes that shrank the system by 26% and imposed draconian austerity. The indebtedness situation erupted erstwhile it was revealed successful 2009 that the state had massively understated its fund deficit. Bond markets panicked and stopped lending to Athens, forcing it to entreaty to the EU for loans that came with harsh conditions.

The ensuing descent caused wide unemployment, wide impoverishment and a brain drain of immoderate 10% of the population. It besides blew up the country’s politics, agelong dominated by the rival patronage systems of the blimpish New Democracy and the socialist Pasok parties.

An anti-austerity government, led by the radical-left Syriza party, was elected successful 2015 and won a referendum to cull the bailout terms, lone to bow to the creditors’ conditions weeks aboriginal erstwhile faced with the alternate of ejection from the eurozone.

The alleged troika of the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank forced Athens to rise wealth by selling disconnected authorities assets, including the port of Piraeus to the Chinese nationalist shipping institution Cosco and the disused Ellinikon airport-to-nowhere to the lone bidder astatine the time, a consortium led by the billionaire Spiros Latsis, who has sprawling banking, shipping, real-estate and lipid interests.

Public protests, squatters and tribunal challenges agelong prevented immoderate improvement of the site, which had been owed to beryllium turned into a park earlier the indebtedness crisis. The aged terminal buildings had been utilized to location mostly Afghan refugees in squalid conditions during the 2015-16 migration crisis, arsenic hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers poured into Greece crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey. The makeshift exile campy was eventually closed successful 2017.

In 2023, builders yet broke crushed connected the Riviera Tower, a 50-floor beachfront flat analyzable designed by the prima British designer Norman Foster’s firm, and the 200-metre skyscraper volition unfastened adjacent year. There volition yet besides beryllium a (smaller) nationalist park, Latsis’s company, Lamda Development, has pledged.

A protestation against austerity successful Athens, 4 May 2010. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

Whether Ellinikon is truly a motion of an enduring Greek renaissance is hotly disputed. For galore Greeks, not overmuch has improved since the acheronian days of the indebtedness crisis. Unemployment has fallen but wages and pensions person barely increased, ostentation – especially successful rents – has eroded surviving standards, and schools, hospitals and nationalist transport person not recovered. The state is inactive seething implicit the deficiency of accountability for a head-on train collision 2 years agone that killed 57 radical and exposed chronic information failures, raising accusations of a governmental cover-up to evade responsibility.

This year’s 10th Delphi Economic Forum, a benignant of yearly Hellenic Davos successful the location municipality of the past Greek oracle, was disrupted by a nationwide general strike implicit wages and nationalist services that prevented galore overseas delegates from arriving. Mitsotakis, whose approval standing has slumped, utilized the juncture to trumpet Greece’s steadfast maturation complaint and instrumentality a excavation astatine Germany, the astir Scrooge-like of its creditors during the crisis.

“We’re nary longer the sick kid of Europe. Our system is outperforming astir European countries. When I look at, for example, the reforms that the German authorities is presently announcing, tons of those reforms we person already implemented successful Greece,” helium told an interviewer successful Delphi. Greeks retrieve lone excessively good erstwhile they were caricatured arsenic profligate, lazy crooks by German media, a depiction epitomised by a German magazine cover that featured the goddess Aphrodite giving the digit to Europe, with the caption: “Cheats successful the euro family: is Greece robbing us?”

On the surface, Greece is generating a steadfast superior fund surplus, and the credit-rating bureau S&P has conscionable upgraded its standing to BBB. After the strike, Mitsotakis recovered capable spare currency to denote a €1bn (£850m) enactment package for low-income pensioners, tenants and different susceptible groups. Public enactment for the EU successful Greece has besides recovered from grounds lows during the indebtedness crisis. Two-thirds of Greeks present accidental EU rank is bully for their country.

But Greece’s roar is fuelled by existent estate, tourism and shipping alternatively than a revival successful manufacturing oregon innovation. “Once you scratch beneath the header macroeconomic and fiscal data, determination is darkness,” says Nick Malkoutzis, the exertion and co-founder of the Greek economical website MacroPolis. “Mitsotakis runs a choky fiscal ship, but we can’t trust connected tourism and existent property for ever.”

Underinvestment successful forestry and exigency services means that Greece is peculiarly ill-prepared for climate-induced disasters specified arsenic the wildfires and floods that person go progressively frequent, Malkoutzis says.

A fistful of powerful, politically connected oligarchic families continues to predominate the economy, with highly concentrated media ownership. Corruption remains corrosive, portion the state is adjacent bottommost of the array successful the EU for press state and the regularisation of law.

So connected person inspection, the caller Greece looks uncannily similar the aged Greece, with stronger nationalist finances but enduring societal and economical imbalances. They whitethorn good instrumentality to haunt a state wherever hubris is ne'er acold from nemesis.

• Paul Taylor is simply a elder visiting chap astatine the European Policy Centre