‘We have deep debts and we have to pay them’

Banks and shops opened for business in Athens this morning as Greeks anxiously awaited news from Brussels on the last-ditch effort to strike a deal to avert a Greek default.

Long queues did not form at the city’s ATMs, but shoppers and business owners said there was widespread concern that capital controls could be introduced to stem the flow of billions of euro from the country’s banks.

“I’m afraid for my child,” said Kannellina Giannakaki, who was browsing at the Golden Hall shopping centre north of the city centre. “I don’t want him to grow up in a situation like this.”

Ms Giannakaki, a lawyer who has taken time off to look after her child, said that “if things go wrong” she and her family would move abroad, perhaps to London. “They’re promising things to people that they can’t deliver,” she said of Syriza, the radical-left party that leads the Greek government. “We have deep debts and we have to pay them.”

In the nearby suburb of Kifissa, where French bakeries, Thai restaurants and high-end retailers occupy prime space on the wide tree-lined streets, retired couple Elias and Themis admitted to being “afraid” about what could happen. “I have no confidence in the government,” Elias said. “I think they have no plan.” Asked if he was tempted to withdraw his money from the bank, he opened his wallet to reveal a wad of €50 notes.

The Golden Hall, a huge mall built just before the economic crisis hit, was exceptionally quiet this morning – a pattern reported by business owners across the city.

At the Kifissia car dealership he has run since 2006, Spyros Pergantis said he had never seen it so quiet. New car sales in Greece have fallen from 280,000 in 2010 to 72,000 last year. Since the beginning of June, orders have fallen by 60 per cent, he said, because “everyone is waiting to see if there is an agreement” with the troika. “They’ve stopped buying. The economy has stopped because nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.”

Views in Kifissia contrast sharply with those of the thousands who gathered at Syntagma Square in central Athens last night to urge prime minister Alexis Tsipras to resist pressure from international creditors to accept more austerity in exchange for releasing billions of euros in bailout funds.

Athina, a student who joined the demonstration to remind Syriza that “we are the people who elected them”, blamed big business interests for encouraging a run on the banks so as to hasten the fall of Mr Tsipras’s party. “Only a minority should worry. If you saw how much money the people here have in the bank, you’d laugh.”

For Athina, staring default in the face isn’t quite as daunting when you have so little to lose. She mentioned high rates of deprivation, suicide and unemployment, and said the country “can’t go on like this.” Greece’s future may lie in Europe or it may not, but going it alone held no fear. “We are already a lost generation. If we have to lose a little more for the next generation to have it better, it’s worth it.”

Young people at the demonstration waved Greek flags and groups of friends broke out in song. ‘Democracy Cannot Be Blackmailed’, said one banner. And another: ‘Agreement = surrender of the people, disgrace for the left’. One elderly man stood silently with his back to the parliament and hoisted a pair of unlocked handcuffs in the air.

Meanwhile, comments by Greek deputy labour minister Dimitris Stratoulis underlined the tightrope Mr Tsipras must walk to reach an agreement that will win over both the creditors and his own party.

“We are not afraid of blackmail, and our priority is the public interest,” Mr Stratoulis, a Syriza hardliner, told Antenna television. “Let’s see if there will be a deal tonight.”