A citizens' scorecard for the 2027 elections

Greece deserves better than
comfortable decline

These are the targets that matter — for prosperity, equality, and happiness. They can be reached from the left or from the right. What they cannot be reached from is inaction.

81st
Happiness rank 2025 — down 17 in one year
68%
of EU avg GDP per capita (was 90%+ in 2000)
27.5%
at risk of poverty or social exclusion
4+ yrs
to resolve a civil court case
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The problem

Five decades of citizens paying for a state that doesn't serve them

Greece is not a poor country. It has educated people, extraordinary geography, and full membership of one of the richest clubs in human history. And yet, for fifty years, its citizens have grown poorer relative to their European neighbours — not from bad luck, but from political systems that reward short-term promises over structural change, that protect incumbents over newcomers, and that measure success by the state's own activity rather than citizens' lives.

500k
Greeks who left during the crisis
Between 2010 and 2020, ~500,000 Greeks emigrated — most young, educated, and productive. Greece trained them and then failed to keep them. This is the largest brain drain in Western Europe.
66.8%
feel subjectively poor
Two thirds of Greeks describe themselves as poor — the highest rate in all of Europe. Economic statistics may show growth; the lived experience of citizens tells a different story.
153%
public debt as % of GDP
Every interest payment is a school not built, a doctor not hired, an infrastructure project not funded. The EU limit is 60%. Greece is at 153%, and the pace of reduction must accelerate.
Our commitment

Fifteen targets. No ideology. Only outcomes.

This scorecard is published by one person — not a party, not a think tank, not a lobby. Its only agenda is the wellbeing of Greek citizens. Each target can be reached from the political left or the right — through more state or less, through higher taxes or lower, through social democratic or liberal economic policy. What they cannot be reached through is drift, clientelism, or the slow comfortable decline that has defined Greek governance for fifty years.

📏
Measurable
Every target is tracked by Eurostat, Transparency International, or the World Happiness Report. No government can claim success without moving these numbers.
⚖️
Politically neutral
A left government can reach these through strong public services. A right government through deregulation and tax cuts. The scorecard is indifferent to the means.
🗓️
Accountable
Updated annually with real data. Any party that commits to these targets and fails to move them will be held to account publicly — here, and in the press.
🧭
Citizen-first
Not what the state spends — what citizens experience. Not budget lines, but lives: poverty rates, happiness, trust, opportunity.
Intellectual foundation

Inspired by Pedro Santa Clara's «Um Guia Prático para Libertar a Economia Portuguesa»

Many of the KPIs on this scorecard were directly proposed or inspired by Pedro Santa Clara — Professor of Finance at Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon — in his June 2026 article laying out a practical reform agenda for Portugal.

Santa Clara's diagnosis of Portugal applies word-for-word to Greece: fifty years of state-as-entrepreneur, captured professions, regulatory moats protecting incumbents, and a fiscal and bureaucratic labyrinth that crushes small entrepreneurs while large groups absorb it. Both countries have been pursuing policies that have made their citizens poorer relative to their European neighbours — not from lack of resources, but from lack of structural reform.

His framework — zero-base review of every public institution, output contracts for agency heads, tax simplification, subsidy elimination, housing supply, and labour flexibility with a genuine safety net — translated directly into the targets on this site. The adaptation for Greece adds the weight of the debt legacy, the severity of the judicial crisis, and the depth of the trust deficit, which are more acute here than in Portugal.

Read the original article (Portuguese) →
"
A ambição é esta: em dez anos, Portugal alcança e ultrapassa a média europeia de rendimento por pessoa e deixa de exportar os seus filhos. Não "converge devagar". Alcança-a.
Pedro Santa Clara · Professor of Finance, Nova SBE · June 2026
"The ambition: in ten years, Portugal reaches and surpasses the European average income per person and stops exporting its children. Not 'slowly converging'. It reaches it."
The parallel is exact
🇵🇹
78%
Portugal GDP/capita vs EU avg
🇬🇷
68%
Greece GDP/capita vs EU avg
Both countries have diverged from the EU average since the early 2000s. Both have experienced IMF programmes. Both have the same structural problems. Greece starts 10 points lower and with a heavier debt burden.
The scorecard

Fifteen KPIs across three pillars — core and deep-dive

Each chart shows Greece's performance from 2020, with targets for 2030 and 2035. The dashed markers are the goals; the solid line is reality. Select a pillar to focus, then choose between the three core KPIs every voter should know, or expand to the full set for a deeper picture.

Detail level:
What actually works

Which reforms move all three outcomes at once

The key insight from the evidence: several reforms are triple-wins — they drive prosperity, reduce inequality, and increase happiness simultaneously, through the same causal mechanism. These should be the priority regardless of which party governs. The dots show the strength of causal evidence for each outcome (●●●● = very strong, ○ = weak or conditional).

Prosperity / Growth
Equality
Happiness & Trust
Weak or conditional
About this project

Why this exists

Diogo Thomaz
Independent citizen · published in personal capacity
This project has no political affiliation, no funding from any party or lobby, and no commercial interest. It is a civic act — one person's attempt to focus Greek political debate on what actually matters to people's lives.
The analysis draws on Pedro Santa Clara's work (Nova SBE), the World Happiness Report (Oxford / Gallup), Rothstein's research on institutional trust, and the Draghi report on EU competitiveness.
Data sources
📊 Eurostat — GDP, employment, poverty, productivity
🌍 Transparency International — Corruption CPI
😊 World Happiness Report — Gallup / Oxford
⚖️ EU Justice Scoreboard — court resolution times
🏦 IMF / World Bank — public debt, informal economy
📰 Reporters Without Borders — press freedom
🏠 OECD housing cost data — affordability