Human capital flight

Greece still has a long way to go to before it strengthens its competitiveness and climbs the world rankings, leaving the low positions it has been in for years.

European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said in Athens on Monday that Europe's productive population is decreasing by one million every year. The problem is even greater in Greece. Firstly, there is the negative birth and death ratio, signaling an annual population decrease of approximately 50,000 individuals - totaling 1,250,000 people by 2050.

We live in a globalized society where countries that produce high value-added products are the winners in international trade. Therefore, because we want our country to be among the winners, we need a strategy for quality development which will be based on specialized professionals and will aim to gradually increase production and high value-added services.

The defense industry is the leading sector of the national technology movement, Industry and Technology Minister Fatih Kacır has said, adding that the sector will be in a much better position than today in the future.

The return of Greeks who left for abroad is one of the biggest challenges for the next four years, as the better prospects that the Greek economy shows today compared to the previous decade are creating the conditions to limit the phenomenon of human capital leakage from the country, commonly known as the brain drain. However, the evidence shows that the expected brain gain is still slow.

There are too many problems that young people have to face in Greece, as the latter has not been a hospitable place for many decades, and that was one of the main reasons why many young people decided to leave. This was also stressed by the Minister of State, Mr Akis Skertos, speaking to ERT channel about the brain drain and how it will be reversed.

Taxation

From 2008 onward, the international system has seen a number of crises blow up: credit, financial and fiscal crises that were followed by the migration crisis and the exacerbation of several geopolitical crises.

Nearly half a million Greeks left the country in the decade from 2008 to 2017, seeking a better luck abroad, mainly in Germany and the United Kingdom, according to the latest available data. The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) is proposing a series of measures not only to stem the outpour of young, skilled Greeks, known a "brain drain", but also to reverse it.

The high advisory board of the Turkish presidency held a closed-door meeting on Feb. 18 to discuss reversing the brain drain from Turkey to all over the world.

See also: Brain Drain: Will the Last Doctor in Kosovo Turn Out the Lights?

The National Medical Council of Serbia annually issues around 800 certificates needed by doctors when applying for jobs abroad. In Kosovo and Bosnia, national medical workers' associations report that hundreds of highly qualified doctors leave each year.