To lure back those who left, we need to change
It’s been a constant theme of past decades but the situation has dramatically deteriorated during the last 10 years as the economic crisis took its toll. With unemployment skyrocketing – hitting 26% at one point – hundreds of thousands of promising Greek minds went abroad in search of a better future.
The painful process has not been reversed in any real sense. Some have returned, but the numbers are minimal. In theory, everyone in Greece – from politicians of every ideological persuasion to society as a whole – is keen on the idea of Greeks who live abroad returning to the motherland. Yet, not every accomplished Greek scientist or professional abroad who has developed modern attitudes and innovative ideas in their fields, is easily embraced back home.
A case in point is the recent resignation of the scientific director of the Athens Academy’s Biomedical Research Foundation, Nikos Kyrpides, a leading, internationally recognized biologist and researcher who led one of the largest research programs for microbial genomics and metagenomics worldwide at the Joint Genome Institute of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. His efforts to change the way things work were not appreciated, to put it diplomatically. “I returned to our homeland to offer my knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, I saw that there was no interest in reorganizing the foundation,” he told Kathimerini recently.
Many disheartened repatriates were reluctant to make the decision to return, and among those who did so, many end up leaving.
To address the problem, we need to not only come up with tax incentives and innovative measures to attract successful Greeks and implement them over the long run, but also change long-held attitudes. It’s very difficult for wages offered in Greece to be competitive compared to the ones the people we want to attract are getting in major Western economies, like Germany or the US. And although Greece’s natural beauty, nice weather, way of life and, in many cases, family and other sentimental ties, might indeed be attractive aspects, they have to be complemented by systemic changes in the state’s structure and in the way both the private and public sectors operate.
To start with, there needs to be a level playing field and transparency and an ecosystem to be created where the driving force is the best ideas, not connections. Where organizations, institutions and companies – and the people in them – embrace the Greeks who dare to return and reward them, not view them with suspicion; at the end of the day, their contributions are part of a process that will benefit all.
Brain drain reflects the broader productive and structural weaknesses of the economy and the shortcomings of Greek society.
To achieve the much-coveted brain gain in a sustainable manner – a challenge for the social and economic progress of the country – we have to change ourselves.
