By Karolina Tagaris
ORMENIO, Greece (Reuters) – Sergeant Christos Giannakidis was planning to have a second child when Greece’s debt crisis erupted last decade, straining his finances and erasing any hopes of expanding the family.
A son is quite expensive, he says, especially to transport him to his remote corner of northeastern Greece, where the number of children has plummeted in recent years.
Most afternoons, he drives 13-year-old Nicholas 50 km (31 miles) to play soccer with the few other children scattered around the area. If Nicolas needs a pediatrician, it’s even further away.
“Nowadays, to raise a family, you have to become a hero,” Giannakidis said on the sidelines of a recent soccer practice. “To have a second child, the house must have more money.”
As much of Europe grapples with a falling birth rate that experts say threatens long-term economic well-being, Greece is a stark example of how difficult it will be ‘reverse.
In 2022, the country recorded the lowest number of births in 92 years, according to the most recent data, due to the debt crisis that led to years of austerity and emigration, and a shift attitude among young people. Preliminary unofficial data indicates a further decline in 2023.
Greece’s fertility rate is one of the lowest in Europe: some villages have not recorded a single birth for years.
The government plans to unveil new measures in May aimed at boosting the birth rate, officials told Reuters.
The plan includes cash benefits for families, affordable housing for young people, financial incentives for assisted reproduction and the integration of migrants into the labor market, according to officials who drafted the initiatives, including the minister of family.
The scale and cost of the plan are not yet clear.
However, similar measures have failed in other EU countries in recent decades, and demographers expect little difference in Greece. Even those who are behind these projects have doubts.
“If I were to tell you that any minister, in any ministry… can turn the tide, it would be a lie,” Sofia Zacharaki, Greece’s minister for social cohesion and family affairs, told Reuters.
Still, she said, “we have to keep trying.”
STREETS FULL OF CHILDREN
The village of Ormenio de Giannakidis and the municipality of Orestiada, one of the poorest in the country, reveal the scale of the problem.
The population of Orestiada, an agricultural area bordering Turkey and Bulgaria, decreased by 16% between 2011 and 2021, according to census data. Ormenio was once populated by children, but today two-thirds of the 300 residents are over 70, said village president Stratos Vasiliadis.
Nicholas, the only 13-year-old in Ormenio, spends many of his weekends playing video games alone. He wants to leave at 18.
“I could send him to study with my sister in Germany,” his father said.
The silence that envelops Ormenio is sometimes broken by church bells ringing above closed businesses and an empty playground, and by the mobility scooters that elderly men ride to the cafe to play backgammon.
Most church pews are unoccupied during Sunday mass. Trains passing through Ormenio once brought visitors, but today they carry tanks to Ukraine.
A recently extended border barrier in the region, part of the Conservative government’s tougher immigration policy, is preventing undocumented migrants from entering.
“Before, we gathered at weddings, baptisms. Now we meet at funerals,” said Chrysoula Ioannidou, 61. “There are very few births.”
Thodoris, brother of Vasiliadis, speech therapist, organizes artistic workshops for around twenty children from the surrounding villages. He said the isolation had stunted their social skills. One boy’s stutter got worse because he had no friends to talk to, he said. Another walks alone through the empty streets of the village.
Ormenio’s situation is reflected to varying degrees in Greece and the EU, where governments such as France, Italy, Norway and Spain have spent billions of euros on measures for children – often in vain.
The Greek economy has rebounded in recent years, but the falling birth rate constitutes, according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a “national threat” and a “time bomb” for pensions.
PRIORITY POLICY
Even before the incentives planned in May, the government created a childbirth allowance and tax breaks on baby items, and expanded private sector maternity benefits.
These measures have shown little sign of effectiveness.
“This is one of the most serious problems we face, not only in Greece but in the EU as a whole,” Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis told Reuters. “It’s our priority… whatever it takes.”
Part of the government’s challenge is overcoming the trauma of the debt crisis. Just a few years ago, as protests raged against the government’s austerity policies, youth unemployment topped 60%. There’s about 25% left.
Hundreds of thousands of young Greeks have left. Those who remain are often priced out of the real estate market due to inflation and soaring rents. Many live with their parents until their thirties.
The municipality of Orestiada suffered greatly. A sugar factory that provided hundreds of jobs has closed and is fenced off on overgrown land. Dozens of other businesses are closed.
The closest primary school to Ormenio, which serves 17 villages, is disappearing. The entire first grade – four children – can slip into their teacher’s morning arms. Next year there will be none, said director Dimitris Rossidis.
“The future doesn’t look bright,” he said.
Nektaria Mouropoulou, a first-year teacher, says she would like to start a family, but she earns 1,000 euros ($1,083) a month, a third of which goes to rent a small apartment. She crosses the Turkish border to buy cheaper gasoline and her mother helps her pay her bills.
“When you are in your thirties and you earn 1,000 euros, you will of course wonder if you should start a family,” she says, adding that politicians have not understood.
“The fact that they give 20 euros for the first child, or 50 or 100 euros, does not solve the problem.”
($1 = 0.9232 euros)
(Reporting and writing by Karolina Tagaris; editing by Edward McAllister and Andrew Cawthorne)
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