Deindustrialization

Shutdown announcements for the factories of the Yioula glassworks firm in Aigaleo in Athens and of EVIEN in Thessaloniki and Kilkis in northern Greece within less than a week served as an alarming message about the risk of deindustrialization.

The European Union must act fast to prevent the deindustrialization of Europe, the president of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, Dimitris Papalexopoulos, warns in an interview with Kathimerini.

• In Sofia fully 12.4 percent of adults are employed in brain business jobs. This is amongst the highest shares in all of Europe.

• In the average European region 5.8 percent of adults work in brain business jobs. The share of knowledge-intensive workers in Sofia is 114% higher than the average European region.

The rapid deindustrialization of the country has led to the shutdown of at least 18 production units in the last five years from 2012 to 2016.

The latest such incident was the termination of the Pepsico-Ivi plant at Viotia, central Greece, on October 31. Three months earlier, on August 2, listed wire and wire ropes producer Leventeris had shut down its plant near Volos.

An extensive photo-story by award-winning Reuters photo-reporter Yiannis Behrakis showed images of closed factories and plants from around Greece, some apparently shutting their doors due to the recent and extreme economic crisis and others closed for years.