The historic turnaround of Greece and Portugal in the wake of the 2008 crisis

In 2008, the EU was unprepared to stem the financial shock and keep it from generating structural repercussions. In 2020, two countries had still been unable to bring their GDP to pre-crisis levels: Greece and Italy. In 2020, the EU found itself having to face a new shock triggered by factors unrelated to the real economy and productive sectors: the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Monetary Fund is projecting for 2020 the worst downturn in global GDP in the post-war period: -3.2%.

In April 2021, during its 32nd “The Outlook for the Economy and Finance” workshop, The European House – Ambrosetti presented its study, “The historic turnaround of Greece and Portugal in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Lessons for Italy and Europe to avoid another twenty years of stagnation” to identify potential lessons for solving the Covid-19 crisis through analysis of two paradigmatic country case studies: Greece and Portugal.

Today, with the issuing of the first tranches of the NRRPs (Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plans) and the effects of the pandemic still extant in European economies and society, examining the strategies of these two countries is even more useful given the most recent macro-economic data and the strategies developed within the Next Generation EU.