Global mobility and Greece’s economic odyssey

A decade after it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and exiting the eurozone, Greece is back. An economic recovery is encouraging the return of expatriates who are being joined by an influx of entrepreneurs and other international investors.

Greece is back!

A Golden Visa programme is helping drive the inflow of high net worth individuals, who are further encouraged by far-reaching reforms that have underpinned the Greek economic revival and helped attract some big investments from multinationals. Greece’s geopolitical stability, anchored in its membership of NATO and the EU, is a further draw – and the appealing climate and lifestyle help too.

Competition among governments to attract capital has led to some rewarding offers of residency status for entrepreneurs; in an unstable geopolitical landscape, global mobility has become a big business. The rise of the ‘digital nomad’ has expanded the pool of people in the global mobility sphere and countries have responded with new measures to lure them. Italy’s flat-tax scheme for wealthy foreign residents, rolled out in 2017, is one such success story.

Greece also introduced flat-tax schemes, and other measures, to attract wealth from abroad. Its popular Golden Visa scheme, which was introduced a decade ago, is the world’s joint second most attractive investment migration scheme, according to a 2024 Global Residence Program Index published by Henley & Partners¹. The scheme offers a five-year residency permit to non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals in exchange for specific direct investments in the country.

“With the abolition of the UK RND (resident non-domiciled) regime and the end of the NHR (Non-Habitual Resident) regime in Portugal, Greece represents an attractive option for wealthy individuals,” explains Nicolas Uster, Head of Wealth Planning at Pictet Wealth Management.

The Greek golden visas are getting harder to come by. Greece has issued more than 17,500 since 2018, and the government is planning to raise the investment threshold for the permits to EUR 800,000 for real estate in cities and islands where demand is high, to shield the local market². The threshold was originally set at a EUR 250,000 property investment in the country before being raised last year to EUR 500,000 in certain areas.

The success of the programme comes on the back of a revival in the economy, which grew at more than twice the euro area average last year, boosted by tourists flocking back to the country after the pandemic, the injection of Eu recovery funds, and repairs to the public finances which have shored up confidence.

Greece exited international bailouts worth more than EUR 260 billion in 2018, marking the end of a debt crisis that – at its low point – saw discussions in Berlin about the idea of a Greek exit from the euro zone. Last year, Greece regained investment-grade status for its debt after 13 years. This year, the government expects economic output to rise by 2.9 percent, up from 2 percent in 2023.

The improved macro picture is attracting foreign investment. A US software giant is investing more than EUR 1 billion in the country, including in a data centre complex near Athens, a leading pharmaceuticals group is expanding a research hub in the port city of Thessaloniki and hundreds of start-ups are popping up, emboldened by the perception that Greece is no longer Europe’s laggard. Indeed, a government-driven digital transformation is reducing bureaucracy and aims to fully digitise the country by 2025.

To be sure, Greece still has work to do. The country still faces the legacy of non-performing loans, it has the highest debt load in the euro zone – more than 160 percent of GDP – and the economy needs to diversify further beyond the volatile tourism sector.

One plus is that shipping, another key sector for Greece’s economy, generally does well in times of geopolitical instability, when freight rates typically rise due to supply constraints. This adds a tailwind to Greece’s economic revival.

The upshot is increased demand for wealth management services, be they asset allocation strategies, wealth planning, family advisory, impact investing or... philanthropy – after all, the word originates from the Greek words ‘philos’, meaning ‘friend’, and ‘anthropos’, meaning ‘human being’.