“Things are pretty steady,” says Drakopoulos Senior Partner Panagiotis Drakopoulos, speaking about the current political climate of Greece. “The past few months have seen no major changes or updates, so there is nothing special to report on.” He says that, as most efforts have been focused on the pandemic, little room is left for anything else.
This steady political sailing also means there has been little variety when it comes to new legislation, Drakopoulos says. “But there has been a strong push for digital transformation,” he notes, “especially in the public sector.” He points to a “lot of laws and drafts of laws on this that have been emerging in recent times – such as those related to digitizing the courts and the land registry.” He also says that increased “digital activity” in the private sector is also prompting legislators to create a framework that would “take into account a lot of remote work and follow how employment transforms as well.”
Drakopoulos says that there are indications that business is getting back on track. “Investments that froze solid at the beginning of the pandemic are slowly thawing now and picking up speed,” he says. “Private equity projects and real estate projects especially, these are leading the pack – fraught with caution but gaining more traction every day.” It is difficult to predict how the economy will behave, he says, and it is unclear whether there will be a bounce-back in 2021. “Optimistic predictions that the economy would heal as early as the first quarter of 2021 have now changed, especially in light of the hits our tourism sector took. One cannot say if 2021 will see significant improvements or if we will have to wait until 2022.”
Finally, Drakopoulos reports that the legal market is getting back on its feet as well. “There are a number of reactivated foreign mandates that fuel this,” he says. “A lot of foreign funds and MNCs willing to invest again and pursue their pre-pandemic goals.” He also describes a noticeable uptick in “soft audits and compliance work, with a lot of companies wary of doing business in a fully-online environment. Folks want to double-check everything, which is prudent.” According to him, “this is why I believe that practices such as TMT/IP and compliance will be what props up the legal market in the near future, more so than traditional work.”