The hunger-fighting NGO Oxfam has said in report Greece is in a terrible state because of austerity which also warned that about 146 million Europeans, almost a third of the Continent’s population, will be trapped into poverty by 2025 as a result of the harsh policies across the region.
“The European model is under attack from ill-conceived austerity policies sold to the public as the cost of a stable, growing economy, for which all are being asked to pay,” said the report.
“Left unchecked, these measures will undermine Europe’s social gains, creating divided countries and a divided continent, and entrenching poverty for a generation,” added the report, due to be released on Sept. 12.
While austerity has helped Greece cut its primary deficit by 9.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2010-2012, one of the largest fiscal improvements recorded worldwide but it has come at the cost of a record 27.6 percent unemployment rate and a six-year-long recession.
“We were founded in 1942 because of the famine in Greece; no one would have believed we would be here more than 70 years later, saying, Greece is in a terrible state,” Max Lawson, Oxfam’s Head of Advocacy said in a statement.
“The UK, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain – countries that are most aggressively pursuing austerity measures – will soon rank amongst the most unequal in the world if their leaders don’t change course,” he said. The charity urged European Union finance ministers who are due to meet in Lithuania to take action to reverse the trend.
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