Leadership Quote by Lucas Papademos

A technocrat’s warning disguised as a footnote to history: Papademos is pointing at the seductive, short-term fixes Greece used before joining the euro and calling them what they were - cosmetic competitiveness. The line is dense with policy shorthand, but the intent is blunt. If “competitiveness” comes mainly from exchange-rate moves (read: devaluations) and one-off “adjustments” (wage restraint, fiscal tightening, administrative tweaks), it’s not competitiveness in the durable sense. It’s a price cut, not a product upgrade.

The subtext is aimed at two audiences. To domestic politics, it’s a rebuke: repeated reliance on devaluation and stopgap reforms created the illusion that the country was catching up, while structural issues - productivity, tax collection, industrial capacity, institutions - stayed stubborn. To Europe, it’s a preemptive defense of euro membership: Greece didn’t lose competitiveness because of the euro alone; it never built a model that could thrive without the escape hatch of currency weakening.

Context matters: Papademos speaks as the ultimate insider - ex-central banker, later prime minister during crisis management. “Temporary gains” is a careful phrase that smuggles in a harsher diagnosis: policy culture preferred reversible pain and politically negotiable “adjustments” over deep reform that creates winners slowly and losers immediately. In euro-era terms, he’s explaining why the old tool kit failed once the exchange-rate lever disappeared - and why blaming the currency is too easy, and too late.