313 The European Economy M3 The situation in Greece in 2012 countries receiving help fail to repay it. It provides a reassurance to investors in the financial markets that they can lend to the ESM (by buying its bonds) and be confident of being repaid. Which countries are the biggest contributors? Germany will provide 27 % of the capital, France 20 % and Italy 18 %. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19870747 (12.8.2014) Sitting in the shade of a mulberry tree in a market square of Volos, Eleni Boubouli is selling dried wild herbs. She picks them herself from the Mount Olympus and other peaks of Thessaly. The simple stall is her way of piecing together a living during Greece’s ongoing crisis that includes teaching the odd English lesson, a bit of yoga and some financial support from her retired parents. “You really need to think about survival now, really think,” she says. “Our situation is so bad I don’t know how to describe it.” Like many Greeks, she feels that the economic maelstrom that has engulfed the country for the past two years will only get worse. A parliamentary election on Sunday, the first since the full onset of the crisis, inspires no confidence that the storm will be calmed. Rather than wait for the despised political class to improve their lot, Greeks are taking their future into their own hands in ways that involve reversion to the past. Bartering and exchange schemes that eliminate the Euro are popping up across the country. Farmers are evading supermarkets and selling directly to customers at substantial discounts. And in a reverse of decades of urban migration, there is strong anecdotal evidence that people are leaving Athens in their droves to return to the provinces where they or their parents were raised, to live off the land, find menial work or live without the debts that city life entails. Ms Boubouli does accept Euros for her produce but also TEM, the Greek acronym for Local Alternative Unit, a coupon scheme that allows members of a network to exchange services and products. Volos, a city on the Aegean coast 200 miles north of Athens, is one of ten such set-ups, with another ten about to start soon. She recently used 30 TEMs to pay for some legal advice from Elena Dimitriou, a lawyer, who in turn used the coupons for piano lessons, an electrician and food at a weekly market for TEM-friendly producers. “The scheme gives me some protection from this crisis,” says Mrs Dimitrou. “With TEM I can purchase things that I just couldn’t afford any more because business is so bad.” Another member is Katya Larisaiou, 35, who joined last week and accepts the coupons at the Petit Fleur, a pretty, pastel-coloured café she owns in the town centre. “Someone said to me that all this bartering is going back 150 years, and I know what he meant. But we have to go backwards to figure out where we should be going,” she says, speaking fluent English learnt as a psychology student at the University of Essex. [...] “I think villages are the future for Greeks the way things are going for our country. You can maintain an acceptable standard of living and Greek nature is fantastic. We have to get back to simple things.” Back in the capital, Theodoros Mitropoulos is planning to relocate soon to the village in the Peloponnesian peninsula where he was brought up. His employment as a carpenter ended two months ago. For the six months before that he was only paid sporadically. 30 35 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 71051_1_1_2015_Inhalt_4.indd 31 21.01.15 10:40 Nu r z u Pr üf zw ec ke n Ei ge nt um d es C .C .B uc hn er V er la gs