On March 14, 2024, a Georgian-language Facebook account published a post stating that if Georgia were to join the European Union, the organization would stop the work of factories in Georgia and destroy the wine, metallurgy, agriculture, and all other industries, because the current members of the European Union want only products created by them to be sold on the common market. Attached to the post is a Russian-language video with the same information, adding that upon joining the EU, Greece, and Poland were required to give up their shipbuilding industries, as Germany has a monopoly on this. According to the video, Spain and Italy demanded Greece to cease olive production in exchange for EU membership. According to the video, for the same reasons, Greece has also had to drastically reduce wine production and only release the kind of wine that is not produced in France, Spain, and Italy.
The first part of the distributed video is cut from the interview of July 3, 2022, where the MP of the Russian State Duma, publicist, and political consultant Anatoly Wasserman talks about these topics in Dmitry Puchkov’s program “РАЗВЕД ОПРОС.” The mentioned interview was actively disseminated on Facebook by Russian-speaking users in 2022 (1, 2, 3).
The claims voiced about the European Union are false. The problems of the shipbuilding industry in Greece and Poland, as well as the Greek wine sector, were caused by events that began before the accession to the European Union. As for the production of olives in Greece, the country ranks third in the world with this indicator and benefits with a significant income. In addition, it was impossible for Spain to make the demand mentioned in the video, since Greece became a member of the European Union several years before Spain.
Shipbuilding industry in Greece and Poland
In the distributed video, the respondent states that in order to join the European Union, the aspiring country must refuse the production of all those products that are already produced in the member states. As an example, he cites the shipbuilding industries of Greece and Poland, which, according to the video, they had to give up. Notably, when Greece joined the European Community (the predecessor organization of the European Union) in 1981, Greece had about as many merchant ships (3,942) as the rest of the organization’s members combined, and by this figure, it was the second largest in the world, after Liberia. Such large numbers were caused by the increased interest of the Greeks in the maritime sector in 1971-1980. It is important to note that not all of these ships were built in Greece. A significant part of them were purchased by Greek owners from others, and some were built in Japan and other East Asian countries on the basis of Greek orders.
Despite the numbers, by the end of the 1970s, it was already clear that the shipbuilding industry was facing problems, due to the oil crisis caused by the OPEC embargo, which increased the price of almost every detail important to production, while demand, on the contrary, fell sharply. These problems affected not only Greece, but also other European countries, including Germany, and in 1989 the shipbuilding industry in all of Western Europe was close to century lows.
In addition to the problems in the shipbuilding industry since the 1980s, South Korea, along with Japan and several other Asian nations, increased shipbuilding. The mentioned fact was a problem, first of all, because wages and production costs in these countries are much lower than in Greece or other EU countries, which is why customers mostly order from these Asian countries. The president of one of the country’s largest shipyards, Scaramanga, named the lack of a unified strategy and disagreement with the national government, the fall in demand in the international market, lack of investment, low quality of technology, and low productivity as the main problems hindering production.
It should be noted that the European Union tried to help the sector in 1997 by approving an investment aid package to one of the largest companies in the industry, Hellenic Shipyards. However, the Greek government violated the terms of the package between 1996 and 2002, thus putting the mentioned company at an advantage over its competitors, which the European Commission considered illegal.
The mentioned manipulation about the alleged connection between the downfall of the shipbuilding industry in Greece and the role of the European Union was fact-checked by “Myth Detector” in the past as well. For more, see:
As for Poland, it has long been one of the largest producers of large ocean-going ships. However, this happened when most of the shipyards were owned by the state. In the 1980s, when the country began to transition to a market economy, the role of the government in this industry was reduced, which was supplemented by the development of the shipbuilding industry in Asian countries, which caused problems in this area in Poland. The industry was hit even harder by the global economic crisis that started in 2008, and as a result, from 2000 to 2020, Poland’s share of shipbuilding globally fell from 2.6% to 0.1%. However, it should be noted that these numbers do not give the full picture, since since 2009, the country has mainly shifted from ship production to ship repair, and Gdansk Shiprepair Yard Remontowa S.A. is the largest ship repair yard in Europe. In Poland, the share of yacht building has also increased, and annual revenue from it has tripled between 2013 and 2022.
The Greek Olive Industry
Greece is the third largest producer of olives in the world, after Spain and Italy. The video claims that the two countries demanded Greece to almost stop producing olives in exchange for EU membership because they did not want a competitor in the market. However, this is difficult to imagine considering that Greece became a member of the European Community in 1981 and Spain in 1986, therefore it would not have the right and opportunity to make a similar request to Greece.
Leading Olive Producing Countries. Source: WorldatlasThere are about 120,000,000 olive trees in Greece, which produce about 120,000 tons of edible olives, and the rest of the harvest is made into olive oil, of which 80% is of the highest quality. It is significant that the country ranks third in terms of production of oil. Despite the numbers, this industry also has problems, as much of the Greek olive oil is exported at a low price to Italy, where it is properly packaged and sold at a high price, because, as already mentioned, Greek olive oil is of the highest quality. However, the Político article mainly cites the weakness of the Greek agricultural cooperative system and the lack of knowledge of farmers as the main causes of the mentioned problem.
Wine industry in Greece
Greek wine indeed faced problems when joining the European Community, because it could not meet the proper criteria. However, it should be noted that this product had a bad reputation even in the 1970s and it did not have many customers outside the country. Solving problems was hindered by the fact that most manufacturers were small businessmen who did not have the means to quickly respond to new standards and improve product quality. From the second half of the 1980s, a number of measures were taken to correct the situation, which really paid off, and at the beginning of the 2000s, wine production approached the initial indicators. The sector received another serious blow during the financial crisis of 2008-2009, in response to which the European Union provided Greece with 7 billion euros of aid, which proved to be enough to significantly increase exports. In 2021, the organization has developed another program to help the wine sector overcome the losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Financial Time article, in the mid-80s, there were only about 70 wine-producing companies in the country, and by 2019, the number of these companies exceeded 1,400. Currently, vineyards occupy 70,000 hectares of land in Greece, of which 64,000 hectares are intended for wine production, and as of 2023, the country ranks 17th in the world in terms of wine production. In recent years, the Greek wine sector has been growing and more and more Greek types of wine are being produced and known to the general public, and most of them are of quite high quality.
“Myth Detector” wrote about the Greek wine industry in the past as well. For more, see:
About the Source:
The Russian-language user “Александр Ногтев” periodically publishes false or manipulative posts of pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian content. Several of the user’s posts have been flagged as false by fact-checking organizations.
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