Conference for the Mediterranean Basin
Speech of Yiannis Tavoularis, Vice President of Elefsis Shipyards/Neorion S.A., Athens, 4 February 2005

The next few years will bring about dramatic changes in the state of world affairs. The entry of China and India in world economic arena will not only affect the economic state, but also political and more important social affairs. Today’s state of affairs can be summed up in a few sentences:

• The European Union is not becoming more democratic, it is just becoming more bureaucratic
• Japans economy is still very static
• China and India have decided to become plutocratic
• South American economies are trying to get pragmatic
• Russia is still a little autocratic
•  Africa as a whole is still problematic, while
• The US foreign policy from the point of view of some Europeans has become, well.. lets call it enigmatic

If Europe fails to react in time to the new economic realities, then for the first time after WWII, the very social cohesion and stability of Europe, the core of the social model, will be in jeopardy. As Commissioner Wim  Kok  put it in his report in November  2004 “Nothing less than the future prosperity of the European model is at stake”.

The goals that Europe set to achieve by 2010, summed up in the Lisbon Strategy, so far have failed in their mid term assessment.

Since 2001, job creation in Europe has stopped. The statistics are quite alarming.

Unemployment in young people is very high, about 18%, while the number of unemployed that are long term with out a job is 45% (in Greece this number is about 50%)

All this means that an ever aging population has to be supported by a decreasing number of people that have a job...

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