The Competitiveness of the Greek Economy is the first comprehensive survey of efforts in the Greek public and private sectors to modernise. It draws on interviews with lawmakers, the executive and business people to record their progress across a 20-year period in drafting and implementing laws that harmonise Greece with the rest of the EU and the globalised marketplace. When the survey was first published in 2004, Minister of Development Dimitris Sioufas had it distributed to the members of the newly formed National Council of Competitiveness and Development as required reading. This edition was updated with an Introduction to include developments in the first half of 2005. The aim of the survey is to appear in updated form once a year.
The survey is broken into the following chapters: Legislation, Bureaucracy, Taxation, Corruption, Labour, Education, Liberalisation, Telecommunications, Energy and Privatisation.

Robert McDonald is a freelance writer and broadcaster based in London who has specialised in Greek matters for 40 years. As well as a contributor to the Athens News, he is the contributor for the Economist Intelligence Unit’s quarterly Country Report: Greece and the author of Kerkyra Publications’ quarterly Business File.