Trade with Greece
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●Adoption of a modern, simple and stable taxa-
tion system that will encourage production,
innovation and extroversion, and will fairly allo-
cate the tax burden, expanding the tax base.
●Transformation of the banking system from a
means of covering state deficits and a hub of
financial gambling, to an instrument for sup-
porting sound entrepreneurship, through the
enhancement of competition and the adapta-
tion of financing criteria to current requirements
(giving less weight to collateral and more to the
dynamism, creativity and reliability of the
investing entity and the growth potential of the
proposed investment).
The crisis that has been plaguing the Greek econ-
omy in the past few years has given chambers a
wider and more crucial role.
Today, no one is ignorant of the fact that a large
part of the decisions that shape the nature and
scope of business activities and regulate the
operation of businesses are conceived and taken
in Brussels.
Thanks to their legal status and dispersion through-
out the Greek territory, chambers are the most
appropriate means for securing uninterrupted, inter-
active and creative communication between the
decision-making centres and financing bodies of
the European Union and Greek entrepreneurs.
The chambers are called to substantiate, and
convey to Brussels, the views, demands, and
growth visions of Greek entrepreneurship, using,
at the same time, modern methods to update the
country’s entrepreneurs on European concerns,
Community trends, regulations, collaboration
opportunities and co-financed development pro-
grammes.
After all, no one doubts any more that it is neces-
sary to break ties with the past, not only in the
field of public administration, but also in the field
of business activity.
The chambers, owing to their wide base and their
objectivity, which is secured by their administrative
self-sufficiency and independence, are the most
appropriate means for identifying the chronic
problems of the productive model that provived
the base for Greece’s post-war growth and for
designing the new model that will replace it, in
order to help the country build a new and compet-
itive entrepreneurial class and acquire a dynamic
and extrovert productive system, within a stable
environment, where the state and private enter-
prise will work together in harmony, and with
clearly distinct roles, towards realizing shared
goals.
For these reasons, it is also imperative to mod-
ernize the architecture of Greek chambers, in
order to enable them provide expanded services
under the best possible circumstances.
To this end, the state and the chambers must
work together for upgrading a developmental
institution, which will soon boast a full century of
creative presence in the country’s economic
process.
However, the main prerequisites for a meaningful
modernization initiative in the chamber sector
should be:
●Recognizing the chambers’ contribution to the
development process up to now, and respect-
ing their long-standing historical presence.
●Enhancing their administrative independence
and their financial self-sufficiency, the absence
of which makes it impossible for them to oper-
ate rationally.
●Encouraging inter-chamber collaboration and
utilizing the relevant synergies, in order to
reduce the operating costs of local chambers.
●Eliminating various bureaucratic obstacles
which make it difficult for chambers to set up
