Substandard infrastructure
The blackout on the island of Santorini has come to underline the sorry state of infrastructure in many of Greece’s main tourism destinations.
There is no excuse for this shameful fact. Hundreds of billions of euros in European funding have been invested in Greece over the past 30 years. Nevertheless, the country’s busiest islands are still equipped with substandard airports that are sorely lacking in security systems.
Greek ports are mostly unsuitable and, in many cases, dangerous. Large islands are to this day powered by outdated electricity plants that have long been abandoned in other parts of Europe.
We must move beyond the fact that huge amounts of European funding have been wasted because of chronic corruption and incompetence among Greek politicians and local authorities. We must finally hammer out a national plan to upgrade the country’s infrastructure in the next three to four years.
