Plans drawn in the sand

Greece finally needs to break out of the vicious cycle of “cursed” public projects that are announced and often put to tender and assigned to a bidder without being properly planned from the start, so they end up costing twice as much or never getting made at all. The underwater tunnel in Thessaloniki is one such notorious project.

With the climate crisis at the door, Greece will have to make some major investments in resilient infrastructure over the next few years. But apart from planning for the future, there also needs to be some accountability about the past. People need to be held responsible for ambitious – and very expensive – plans that were drawn in the sand.