greece

Hello, my name is Guy Leok. I'm an

interpreter at the skick in the European

Commission and I'd like to give you a

speech now about Greece, about its uh a

brief speech about its history and its

economy. And I'll begin now.

Greece is currently in crisis, but um

Greece um is also known to us not only

as a as the crisis country of the Euro

zone, but um for it's been known to us

for longer as the cradle of European

civilization, which perhaps the way in

which the Greeks would prefer to be

known.

And this is no coincidence because there

are very strong geographical reasons for

civilization coming to Europe via

Greece. Greece was simply the part of

Europe which was nearest to the ancient

civilizations of the Middle East in um

the Nile in the Nile Valley in ancient

Egypt and in Mesopotamia.

So how did civilization first come to

Greece? Well, the answer of course is by

trade. Um, if you've ever been to

Greece, you'll know that it's a very

mountainous country with low rainfall,

hot summers, ideal for tourism, and also

that's ideal for the production of

olives and grapes. But it's not ideal

for the production of vital staple crops

uh such as cereals, which you need to

feed the population.

So from ancient times, Greece was forced

to trade because it couldn't grow these

vital staple crops itself. It was forced

to trade with other countries and Greek

merchants traded wine and olive oil

which the Greeks were very good at

producing for cereals grown on the other

side of the Mediterranean in the Nile

Delta.

But Egypt of course was on the other

side of the sea, the Mediterranean. So

the Greeks were forced to build ships to

trade with the Egyptians. And that was

the beginning of Greece's history as a

maritime nation, a seafaring nation.

The But the Greeks didn't just use the

ships they built to trade with the

Egyptians. They used them to explore

beyond the eastern Mediterranean, and

they established trading colonies as far

west as southern Italy and the south of

France.

Looking at the Greek economy today, we

can see that Greece is still very much a

maritime nation. It has the third

largest merchant fleet in the world. It

has a fishing fleet of 20,000 vessels

which land 150,000 tons of fish and

seafood every year. And that's 15% of

the total fisheries yield from the

Mediterranean.

On top of the merchant fleet and the

fishing fleet, you also have a very

large fleet of feries in Greece which uh

transport people and vehicles between

the Greek mainland and the 150 inhabited

Greek islands. So Greece still very much

a maritime nation.

And another aspect of the Greek economy

that hasn't changed since ancient times

is the importance of olives. Olives and

olive oil are still a mainstay of the

Greek economy. Every year, Greece

harvests around 2 million tons of

olives. That's 17% of world olive

production.

And Greek olive oil uh also enjoys a

reputation of high quality of in fact

being the best olive oil in the world.

If you look at the percentage of Greek

olive oil production that qualifies for

the top quality category, it's 75%.

And that is a higher proportion than in

other uh olive oil producing countries.

For example, going if you go west from

Greece, it's only 50% of Italian olive

oil qualifies for that top category. And

further west, only 30% of Spanish olive

oil qualifies for the top quality

category.

There are some things that have changed

in Greece since uh ancient times thanks

to artificial irrigation.

Now Greece rather like Israel is able to

produce a large variety of fruit and

vegetables in what was previously fairly

barren terrain. So um Greece produces a

much greater variety of agricultural

products than it did in ancient times.

That includes tobacco. It also includes

very high quality cotton. Cotton which

is regarded as the second best quality

cotton in the world after Egyptian

cotton.

In terms of industry, the industrial

revolution rather passed Greece by.

There's no heavy industry there. There's

no coal mining, the things we typically

associate with industry. But Greece does

have some light industry and it also has

some deposits of other metal ores other

than iron ore um such as bork site which

is an ore of aluminium.

I mentioned at the beginning that Greece

is often referred to as the cradle of

European civilization and that's one of

the reasons together with its very um

pleasant climate why it's become a uh a

center for tourism as a very large

tourism sector. So I would conclude

perhaps with a um helpful and pleasant

recommendation which is that this year

we think about spending our holidays in

Greece so that we can become more

educated Europeans, finding out about

the origins of our own civilization

while at the same time helping to

correct the current economic imbalance

between Northern Europe and Southern

Europe.