News archive of November 2023

The atmosphere at the event to mark the creation of the Seferis Office and the Roderick Beaton Reading Room at the Greek Embassy in London last Monday afternoon was wonderful and worthy of Greek-British friendship. Suddenly, "after the speeches, the atmosphere changed. The room went cold, we were all surprised," prominent writer Victoria Hislop, who was at the embassy, told Kathimerini.

Primary sources hold that had he not died prematurely in Messolongi almost 200 years ago, Lord Byron would have been offered the throne of Greece and ruled the newly established kingdom as its first monarch. It is quite possible that Lord Byron was the King George I that Greece never had.

The benefits of digitization are so obvious and now experienced by citizens that anyone who hinders it can only fight a rearguard battle in favor of their petty interests. All in vain. 

It's not a joke but a true story. A "socialist" president of an African country wanted to showcase his avant-garde vision to the people. So, he commissioned a Dutch food company to build a state-of-the-art bread production facility in the nation's capital, and amid much fanfare, flour went in one end of the factory, and fresh, sliced bread in colorful packaging came out the other.

November proved to be a very profitable month for the Greek stock market, and not only for bank stocks, whose index soared 12.44%, but also for the benchmark, which has grabbed 6.88% from October 31. The month ended with a high-trade day due to index rebalancing and gains for most stocks, which took the main index to a new 12-week high on Thursday.

In their latest clash with the Digital Governance Ministry, notaries have decided to strike until December 11, saying that the digital platform for property transfers that will be created will not also be under the responsibility of the Justice Ministry. What's more they said that the digital procedure described has not been provided for in legislation.

The changes to the taxation of the self-employed and freelancers proposed by the Finance Ministry brought to mind a discussion I had in 2012 in Washington with Poul Thomsen, the then head of the International Monetary Fund's mission for Greece and later the Fund's director for Europe.

Greece ranks among the worst performing countries in terms of time taken to diagnose HIV patients (2.9 years on average), along with Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Berlin appreciates Greece's efforts to contain migrant flows into the European Union but it is also hoping to discuss ways of reducing secondary migration to Germany, the country's new ambassador to Greece, Andreas Kindl, tells Kathimerini in his first interview from his new post in Athens.