(Bloomberg) — Giannis Moschos remembers the bad days. An economy in ruins, business relationships in tatters, his country the butt of jokes. That was the Greece of 2012, the same year Moschos and his brother founded their family olive business.
Now, having built up the company, he wants to be part of the future of Europe; making quality produce and doing it with clean energy, saving money and helping the continent’s lofty climate ambitions at the same time. Similar rewriting of stories is playing out across a swathe of Southern Europe as Greece, Spain and Portugal, once seen as economic basket cases, start to strut a bit after years of slogging through a brutal crisis and deep recessions. They’ve become the region’s outperformers, growing at rates twice the euro-area average and far in excess of many of their neighbors.
Expansion in Spain and Greece is set to top 2% this year, compared with just 0.8% for the euro area. Germany, the region’s largest economy, will barely grow.
But the scars of the economic slump remain — particularly in the labor market — and reputation rebuilding goes on. The crisis period embedded a view that Southern Europe is irresponsible, lazy, unproductive, clinging on to the euro currency only thanks to handouts from richer northern European countries. That perspective turned a geographic divide into a deep schism of doubt, suspicion and antagonism.
From Athens to Madrid and Lisbon, the hard work goes on to change that. When Greek companie.