"Things are getting worse and worse in Greece. There is no future for the next few years there," says Christos Christoglou, a Greek inspection engineer who moved to Germany to find work.
By Andy Eckardt and Carlo Angerer, NBC News
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse and a country which has been criticized by many Greeks over its harsh demands for austerity cuts in return for bailout cash, has experienced an influx of young skilled immigrants.
Der Spiegel magazine noted that while Greek newspapers "printed cartoons depicting the Germans as Nazis, concentration camp guards and eurozone imperialists who allow their debtors to bleed to death," the Greeks have kept arriving bringing an "anything is better than Athens" attitude with them.
With more than 50 percent of
young Greeks out of work,
it’s not surprising that
official statistics show the number of Greeks who moved to Germany increased 90 percent during 2011.
Unemployment rates have consistently been shrinking in Germany in recent years and the economy is thriving despite Europe’s ongoing financial
crisis. Relaxed cross border employment regulations for member states of the European Union also make Germany an attractive choice for job seekers. And while Germany is in need of specialized workers, the Greek labor market has little to offer.
Leftist
tipped to be next Greek leader warns of ‘Cold War’ over cuts
"It is virtually impossible
to find a job in Greece at the moment," says Christos Christoglou, an inspection engineer who took a job at German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer at the start of the financial crisis in June 2010. "It is not that there are only very few jobs for young graduates to seek, no, there are none, zero, there
is nothing."
A year after moving to Germany, Christoglou’s wife Mary and their 5 year old daughter Georgina joined him last summer. The family now lives in a four bedroom apartment in Leverkusen. They are likely to stay for good.
"My wife, an English teacher, and our daughter, do not speak German yet. But my Mary will soon also try to find a job," Christoglou told NBC News. "And while, yes, it is quite difficult to be without our close friends and family in Greece, I do not want to waste my six years of intensive studies to find myself without hope for the future."
Christoglou, 38, says incentives are needed to prevent Greece’s well educated workforce from abandoning the
country.
"I know many
Greek academics, but also ordinary workers, who have moved
to wealthier European countries, like France, the Netherlands or Sweden," he added.
Greek debt woes put Europe
on financial knife edge
According to Germany’s national statistics office, some 24,000
people left Greece last year to live
and work
in Germany, almost double the number who did so in 2010. Tsianos told the magazine he estimates that 60,000 new Greek immigrants arrived in Germany in 2011.
There was also a significant spike in the
number of immigrants relocating to Germany from other economically depressed southern European countries last year, with official statistics showing an increase of 52 percent from Spain, 28
percent from Portugal and 23 percent from Italy.
So much for ‘the Spanish dream’: Euro crisis turns suburbs into ghost towns
Until a few weeks ago very few people had heard of him, but
Alexis Tsipras could soon be the next Prime Minister of Greece. His anti austerity stance
won his party second place in the recent election, and the forecasts for next month’s run off suggest they could do even better.
The recent arrivals include 27 year old IT specialist Vasileia Paschali, who decided to bid farewell to Greece’s political and economic turmoil and arrived in the quaint southern German city of Boeblingen nine months ago. She didn’t speak a word of German.
"The most difficult thing was learning German, it was terrifying at the beginning," Paschali told NBC News. "Life is so quiet and structured here in Boeblingen, which is quite a contrast to the hectic routine I experienced in Athens."
She responded to a job offer from German engineering development supplier Ruecker, a company which mainly
services the automobile and aviation sectors.
Europe told to prep for Greek exit scenario
Wiesbaden based Ruecker is actively recruiting technical engineers from Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, offering them a two month paid language course followed by an open ended contract with a guaranteed base salary of about $4,500 per month.
"There are simply not enough qualified applicants on the German market," says Thomas Aukamm, who works for Ruecker’s marketing and recruiting department. "These are investments that we need to make in order to secure the workforce that we work with in the future."
The company has received about 3,500 applications, mainly from southern European countries,
and is presently evaluating about 500 of them.
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