(On Monday March, 7th, researchers and PhD students gathered to discuss the recent wave of protests in Greece and Turkey. We publish Stella Christou contribution on what is happening in Greece).

This event was organised to discuss the recent mass mobilisations in Greece and Turkey. I will be speaking on Greece, although 10 minutes is too little a time to go over the decades of austerity, depletion, corruption and mismanagement that are at the root of these momentous protests we saw over the past few months.

So, without further a due, I will take you back to February 28th 2023 at Tempi, where a passenger train collided with a commercial train carrying what is now suspected to be illegal and highly flammable substances. The crash took 57 lives, most of them young students, commuting between two of the country’s largest cities. Two years later, on February 28th 2025, a general strike was declared, marking two years since the “anniversary” of that tragic crash. Two years later, the trial had yet to start, stalled by ongoing delays in the investigation, while the government continues to deflect responsibility and literally cover its tracks – by dumping debris at the crash site.

This February 28th, then, one million people took to the streets in Athens, 300,000 in Thessaloniki and so many more in more than 400 locations inside and outside the country- Florence included. The strike was organised by the grieving parents and families of the victims and attended by broad layers of Greek society, including middle class shop owners. According to commentators, this marks the biggest mobilisation in the recent history of Greece.

These numbers were not even seen during the momentous anti-austerity protests over the years of the economic crisis, where hundreds of thousands of people mobilised against the memoranda of understanding signed between the Greek government, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank in exchange for bailouts for the country. These memoranda imposed on the Greek authorities a major privatisation programme involving a number of state-owned enterprises. These included the Public Power Corporation, the ports of Athens and Thessaloniki and, last but not least, part of the railway system.

This partial privatisation of the Greek railway system unfolded according to the privatisation playbook. That is to say, it undermined the functioning and performance of the system internally, then split it up into different entities and finally sold off the most profitable parts of the company. In this case, this was the operation of passenger and freight trains. This operational part of the Greek railway system was sold to Hellenic Train, a subsidiary of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, for just 45 million euros, while the ownership and maintenance of the railway infrastructure of the system remained in public hands.

This combined and uneven Public Private Partnership prioritised the profits of the private partner over any type of investment in maintenance and safety. Following the crash, the government insisted it was the result of “human error”, personified in the inexperienced and inattentive station manager. Over the past months, however, specialists have concluded that for any railway system to be considered safe, the human error factor should not only be calculated but anticipated and compensated for. How?

Through the use of standard safety systems that include 1) light signalling, 2) a telecommand system, 3) a digital radio communication system between drivers along the line, 4) an automatic braking system and, finally, in the event of a crash, 5) a fire protection system. In the case of the Tempi crash, none of these systems were operational or in place. Why?

The answers are to be found in this combined and uneven Public Private Partnership. On the side of the Greek state, the railway infrastructure lacked light signalling, and a system of telecommand. The above were supposed to have been completed by the contractor companies that took on their installation and modernisation in 2010. However, after successive extensions, the projects were not only unfinished, but also ended up costing 50% more than the original budget due to disputes between the contractors. Works resumed in 2019, when parts of the existing systems were deemed obsolete – they had to be removed and reinstalled. According to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, had the original contract been completed, the crash would certainly have been avoided. Why was the contract not completed? Because of, and again according to the European Public Prosecutor, the profit maximisation strategies pursued by the contractors.

Moving forward, the digital radio communication system that was meant to provide voice and data services was taken over by another contractor, Siemens, in 2008 and was delayed by 10 years due to the company’s involvement in a bribery and money laundering scandal that involved the same party -that is New Democracy- and the current PM Kiriakos Mitsotakis. Works restarted, but the system was not compatible with the trains in operation. Why? Because Hellenic Train, the private partner, had not registered its trains in the radio system. What is more, these are the same trains, that no other company in Europe was willing to buy -describing them as the Alpine toilets, or Cessi Alpini- that also happened to have outdated fire protection systems that could not cope with the combustion that followed the crash.

Finally, the automatic brake system ETCS although installed on Greek trains, was not operational. That is because of the absence of public investment for the maintenance of the railway which does not provide for the replacement of damaged or missing cables in the network. To give you a figure, while Europe invests an average of 170,000 euros per kilometre of railway line each year, Greece allocated just 20,000 euros per kilometre in 2020.

Can anyone be convinced by the government’s denunciation of “human error” then? Apart from being an absurd defence, this point takes us back to the memoranda of understanding and concomitant austerity, as the crisis left 1,200 positions uncovered in the Greek railways.  Again, according to experts, the average for European railways is 2 employees per kilometre of track. In Greece it’s estimated at 0.5- that is half an employee per kilometre of track.

The workers and syndicalists of the Greek railways were aware of all these problems and had begun to mobilise years before the crash. The Panhellenic Federation of Railway Workers had issued a series of warnings about the safety of the railways, and in a document just three weeks before the crash they stressed that accidents had become a daily affair and that they – and I quote- “will not wait for the accident to come to see them shedding crocodile tears and making statements”. This was three weeks before the crash. And that is why the demonstrators insist that the Tempi crash was a crime. Not an accident.

This spontaneous, unorganised mass of protesters, then I would argue, forms part of the larger movement against austerity in the country. And these mobilisations mark another culmination of public indignation against corrupt governments and industries alike. Against the cynicism and callousness with which the case has been treated by politicians, the media and the judiciary alike.

And against their utter disregard for human life.

As one of the main slogans of these protests sums it up: ITS THEIR PROFITS OR OUR LIVES.