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Amanpour

Examining Greece's Economic Woes; Gay Americans with Foreign Partners

Aired February 21, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Here's something that might surprise you: the best performing stock market in Europe in 2012 was -- wait for it -- Greece. The Athens index rose 33 percent, outpacing even Germany. But the news is not as good as it seems. Europe's overall economy continues to contract. And after so long underwater, the Greek market has a lot of ground to make up.

But Greek officials now predict the economy will start growing by October, as European support lends a measure of confidence to foreign and domestic investors.

So is a Grexit -- that Greek exit from the euro -- off the table now? Judging by events unfolding there, not yet. A nationwide strike yesterday shut down government services throughout the country. Roads and railways were bare as transportation came to a standstill.

And once again, the young took to the street to do battle with police. Some 60 percent of them remain without jobs. Greece has the highest unemployment rate in Europe. And the country owes more than it makes. The national debt is 161 percent of GDP.

The human factor is tragic, with suicides, many people losing their homes, unable to pay for food or even for the heavily taxed heating oil.

George Papandreou was prime minister of Greece through some of the early days, the roughest days of the country's economic crash. And he joins me now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister.

GEORGE PAPANDREOU, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE: Nice to be here, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Let me go straight to the heart of the tragedy of what's happening to the Greek people. You have been prime minister and foreign minister; your father and grandfather have also held those positions.

What does it do to you when you see the pain that your people are in?

PAPANDREOU: It pains me also. And I had to take very difficult decisions because we were facing a default. And, of course, we were able to avoid a default. And we had to take very harsh measures, which were painful, and the pain is still there.

AMANPOUR: The austerity measures?

PAPANDREOU: The austerity measures, and of course, I believe that we couldn't do otherwise. However, at the same time, we expected to have greater support and protection from the European system, if you like, the Eurozone system, which has its flaws.

And I think what we are seeing now is where Greece is actually living to its side of the bargain. But the Eurozone itself has certain flaws which create problems.

Just to give you an example, when we are -- we had to do what we call an internal devaluation, that is cutting the wages, cutting the pensions to make our market more competitive. But if the euro -- since were in a common currency -- appreciates, we lose that immediately.

So this is a problem where we need to work together. And this is where I think Europe, even though we've made steps, had done too little too late and the problem is still there. And it's very painful.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you first, your president has recently said that any more austerity rammed down the throats of the Greeks, will cause a social explosion.

Do you think that's going to happen? And is Greece going to be forced to take more austerity?

PAPANDREOU: I agree with him, that we cannot have more austerity. Actually, I have always said from the beginning, austerity or consolidating our budget is obviously a priority. But the first priority was to look what was behind the problem. Why did we reach these debt levels? Why did we have such a deficit?

And for me, it was more for reform. We needed to reform the government structures; we had to cut down bureaucracy, cut down lack of transparency, corruption. Actually, that was what I started doing. And that was we were moving and doing. And that would have, over the long period, really created a much more robust and competitive economy.

AMANPOUR: Is that happening now?

PAPANDREOU: I would say we need to push this even more. The things I began, I would like to see -- to further and deepen, such as online -- we put everything on, all the expenditures online. We put the prescriptions of medicine online so that we cut actually 30 percent, just by that act.

So this just shows that there was a lot of waste where we could have, through reforms, made changes. So austerity is not the solution. Austerity may be necessary; some austerity may be necessary in order to consolidate the budget.

But in the end, it will be these reforms that will make Greece a more competitive country. And just one more thing: when you have austerity -- and I was talking to former chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroder, he said to me -- and he said this publicly -- he could have never reformed Germany at the same time with austerity.

So I think we should have prioritized reform and less austerity. That meant, of course, we needed more help from the European Union, more help to calm the markets and this is where we did too little too late.

AMANPOUR: But do you agree with the premise that something must have gone right because there is this growth of the stock market? Your finance minister has said that, you know, there's some optimistic early summer bookings; they believe, you know, that tourism might take off again and that October could see a turnaround.

PAPANDREOU: First of all, I believe Greece has great potential. You've mentioned tourism; tourism has been up the last few years, despite some of the problems and despite some of the images also. Greece is a very welcoming place.

Our tourist industry is doing well. We are top, number one in fisheries. Green energy is a new area where we're developing wellness, education, health, are areas which could be an actually an exportable product.

So Greece has great potential. However, I think what has happened now is that the austerity measures have been very deep and are breaking the backs, particularly of our younger generation. I don't want to see a lost generation.

And this is where we need more concerted effort. We need a growth policy in Europe. We need a social cohesion policy, for example, in the United States if you have -- if you have unemployment in one state, people usually will move to another state and find jobs elsewhere.

That's not -- there's not much mobility in Europe, for a number of reasons. Language may be one. But if we created a so-called Erasmus program, as we have for students in Europe, that is a scholarship for all the unemployed, particularly now during the crisis, funded by the E.U. budget, to get these younger -- this younger generation out there again, being trained, finding jobs so that theirs (ph) don't fall off the cliff.

AMANPOUR: You talked about the larger European situation. The German government has made it kind of clear that they would prefer Silvio Berlusconi does not win the coming-up elections in Italy, feeling that he's anti-Europe, anti- -- you know, anti- -- too populist (ph) and that he actually dragged Italy, the third largest economy, into deep trouble.

What do you make of that? Would a Berlusconi government be bad for Italy today?

In terms of the economy?

PAPANDREOU: Well, first of all, we have our political parties in Europe; and I'm not in the same political party that Berlusconi is, so I would like to see the --

AMANPOUR: Of course. But France, for instance, says the euro is at stake in this election.

PAPANDREOU: Yes. Well, I would say -- first of all, I would say that can you imagine the problem that a euro and our institutions in Europe are seen -- they see that democracy as a threat? Because when I called for a plebiscite, when I called for a referendum, people said, well, you're putting the euro at stake.

And, in fact, I wasn't. I was saying, we need to ask our people. They need to decide. So we shouldn't allow -- there must be some flaw, that if one is elected in the one part of Europe or another part of Europe, that this will destroy the complete or the whole structure of the Eurozone.

What is means is we still have a fragile structure of the Eurozone. Let's deal with that. And let's let peoples of each country decide who they want and who they want them to be as their -- as their leaders.

AMANPOUR: What will, though, cause Europe to grow again economically? It's been contracting still, the growth in Europe.

I mean, I want to play you something that Prime Minister Cameron of Britain told me -- and he made a speech, obviously, about it, wanting to reform, and particularly adjust Britain's role in the European Union. Let me just play what he -- a little bit of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CAMERON, PRIME MINISTER, GREAT BRITAIN: What I'm doing is saying while we make changes to suit the euro, let's also make changes to make the whole of the European Union more flexible, more open, more competitive. Let's make sure that powers can flow backwards towards nation states as well as forward to the center.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Different parties, different parts of the political spectrum. But do you agree with that?

PAPANDREOU: Well, I would say, first of all there isn't this concerted (ph) of subsidiarity (ph) where we should take positions as close to the people as possible, local government, national governments.

At the same time, we are a currency union, but we don't have the tools at the level of Brussels, like a federal state would have. A banking union, a fiscal union, we have different tax situations which create tax evasion very often. That's one of my problems. That was one of our problems; still is in Greece.

It's not simply a Greek problem. It's the fact that the banking system allows for people to tax evade, take their money out and not pay taxes.

We have --

AMANPOUR: Greece has had a problem with that --

PAPANDREOU: Absolutely.

AMANPOUR: -- I mean, you had the Lagarde list; you had this terrible situation where the people are really getting walloped, the Greek people.

PAPANDREOU: Well, that's exactly what I'm --

AMANPOUR: -- and so many of the richer, the more elite, are getting away with not paying their taxes, and there's no accountability yet.

PAPANDREOU: Absolutely. What our government did and what my government did is we made changes in the tax system; we made -- we opened up the accounts in the banks for full transparency, so we can see what people have done, if they've avoided taxes.

However, the international system, even in Europe, but the international system has not made the necessary changes for fighting tax havens, the Cayman Islands and so on. And that's why I think that this is not simply a Greek problem. We sometimes Hellenize the problem, which is wrong.

AMANPOUR: Indeed, "The Economist" this week has a front cover, which says, you know, 20 trillion tax shelters --

(CROSSTALK)

PAPANDREOU: So think of the injustice. We are asking our peoples around the world for deeper austerity, for becoming more competitive by cutting wages. But at the same time, we're allowing for huge profits and revenues which normally would be at the -- in the national coffers for growth, for investment, for education, for welfare and for paying back our debts.

They are taken off to some stratosphere where there is -- that is not being -- that is not being controlled. This is where I think Europe could play a role.

That's what Europe is. Europe is uniting our resources in order to dealing with this rather wider global challenges, whether it's the financial crisis, or it's climate change, that's what Europe means. And I think we have failed -- even though we've done quite a few things -- we have failed to live up to that aspiration of our European peoples.

AMANPOUR: So briefly and finally, where do you see a ray of hope? You're here now in the United States, lecturing. Where do you see a ray of economic hope for your country and for -- and for Europe?

PAPANDREOU: Well, I think my country has done its side of the bargain and it's still doing so with all the problems and all the difficulties. I believe that, at the same time, we need to continue our reforms. But we also need to have an alternative strategy.

Let's move forward to a banking union so people feel that you know, they don't have to take their euros out from one country to another. Let's move forward to the green growth strategy in Europe, to stimulate -- not at the national level but at the European level -- to make our countries more competitive. Cameron was talking about competitiveness.

Yes, let's do that, but let's create the infrastructure so that we can be competitive. And green energy and energy grids and communication, don't forget Europe is still quite divided as far as infrastructure is concerned because of the Cold War, because of the North-South divide.

We have a lot to do, still, for a single market. Let's also look and see how we can create programs to help our youth in this crisis, such as scholarships for the unemployment.

So I think there are things we can do, but it will take a real sense of leadership in Europe, something which I hope will emerge from the elections, but also from the realization that we do have the powers in Europe to make Europe, again, an example for the world. If we pool our resources and are not fearful of pooling our risk.

AMANPOUR: Let's hope.

Prime Minister, thank you very much indeed for --

PAPANDREOU: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And unlike Europe, United States economy is growing, albeit slowly. But when it comes to another issue, immigration, the U.S. is a model of what not to do and this is especially true for gay Americans with foreign partners. A choice between love or country, when we return.

But first, another look at Greece that isn't your typical billboard. It's a grassroots effort to revive Greece's economic engine, which is tourism, as we've been saying.

Some 200 Greeks, common citizens, raised 12,000 hard-earned British pounds to rent a space in the heart of London's Piccadilly Circus for two weeks. They've also brought their campaign here to New York and to Washington. And we'll be right back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

The immigration system in the United States is so broken that President Barack Obama has made it a top priority to fix and reform it. The focus here in the U.S. is usually on what to do about the so-called 11 million undocumented.

But what about how the laws affect American households? Today gay Americans with foreign partners are forced to choose between love and country. Here's why.

A heterosexual American is allowed to bring a foreign spouse to live here in the United States. But a homosexual American is not. Many states have now legalized same-sex marriage, but on a national level, the federal government has not.

So many gay Americans and their partners are packing their bags and leaving these shores, such as my next guest, Brandon Perlberg, who's an American, who fell in love with a Briton, Benn Storey. The couple lived together here in New York for seven years. But in order to stay together, they've relocated to Britain. And both join me now from London.

Brandon and Benn, thank you very much for joining me.

Walk me through, Brandon, the choice that you were forced to make -- both of you. There you were dating; you had lived together in the United States, here in New York, for seven years at least. What happened?

BRANDON PERLBERG, GAY AMERICAN: Well, Benn's immigration status was always uncertain because I was unable to sponsor him for a green card. He was relegated to being sponsored by an employer. And that's a very different process, when you're seeing a green card, based upon employment.

For example, if I was able to sponsor Benn, the test would be can we demonstrate that we have a real relationship? But because he was an employer-sponsored applicant, there were other hurdles that he had to -- that he had to --

AMANPOUR: Surmount?

PERLBERG: -- pass.

I'm sorry?

AMANPOUR: Yes, let me just follow up on that.

Benn, did you ever consider separating or was this idea of just relocating -- how did you come to that?

BENN STOREY, GAY BRITON: We never considered separating, no. We -- the idea of relocating was always in the back of our minds as a -- as a backup plan to me staying in the U.S., us staying in the U.S. together.

We could -- we had to relocate in the end because not only was immigration status in the U.S. uncertain, to say the least, I was originally on H-1B visa, which we were trying to get transferred into a green card through employment, which is a lengthy and expensive process and has to be employer-driven for me.

In the U.K., the recent government -- well, not so recent now -- but the government changed, when David Cameron came in with his coalition government, there was talk of strengthening immigration rules here to make it more difficult for same-sex partners to bring a partner to the U.K.

PERLBERG: So we had always thought that this was going to be our backup plan. If we were unable to obtain a green card for Benn in the U.S. through his employer, that we would be able to come to Britain. And as things became increasingly more difficult and we met with counsel in the U.S., that made it certain -- or they made it clear that it was going to be unlikely for Benn to obtain a green card.

We really began eying those options for us here in the U.K. And finally, at the beginning of last year, it became certain that if we did not move now, we really faced the risk of being indefinitely separated. And that's wasn't a risk we were willing to face.

AMANPOUR: And to both of you, you're obviously not the only couple in this situation. There are, for want of a better word, what somebody in the Netherlands has started, Love Exiles Foundation. There are love exiles from the United States all over -- all over Europe, apparently, right now.

What was it like for you, Brandon, trying to -- Brandon, trying to get a job? You're a lawyer; it's a specialized job. How did -- how easy was that in your now foreign country?

PERLBERG: It was anything but easy. That was one of the most difficult parts of this process for me. Now I was an attorney in New York State for several years. My field of practice was high-end matrimonial litigation, which is an extremely specialized field.

I arrived to Britain hoping that my background and work as an attorney and work within that field would be something that was respected by employers here. But that wasn't the case. That knowledge just is not something that was valued here.

So I spent 11 months hemorrhaging finally, burning through savings and going on interviews and sending out probably close to 200 CVs for jobs, any job that I could think or write well. I have some legal skills. So maybe that would apply for this position or that position.

AMANPOUR: But how you --

PERLBERG: It was so, so hard.

AMANPOUR: How do you feel about your own country, given these circumstances?

PERLBERG: I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I love my country and I've never felt more personally attached and involved in its future as I do right now, as there's a debate going on as to immigration and a debate going on as to same-sex marriage, both of which are obviously important to us.

At the same time, I cannot shake this feeling of resentment that I have, that our lives were taken away from us. I mean, you know, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, I was unable to marry Benn and sponsor him for a green card.

So the way that I look at it, in the name of the defense of marriage, we were forced to give up everything, our home, our careers, our proximity to friends and family, all of that, and start a new life over here, because we dared to put our relationship first, because we said, no, that means more to us than anything else.

And the great irony is that that value is the very thing that makes the defense of marriage worthwhile. So what a stupid law.

AMANPOUR: Let me put up a big map that we have, that shows that there are some 76 countries, maybe a couple more than that, where homosexuality is illegal in the world.

Benn, what would have happened if you hadn't, you know, come to Britain, if Britain had not put out the welcome mat?

STOREY: Well, in that respect, we are very much the lucky ones. Having done the article in "The Times," and talking to you, people are reaching out to us now, telling us their stories. And it's -- like I say, we are the lucky ones because there are people who have no option but to go back to their home country and separate from their partner, which, you know, in some cases, is splitting up families.

I don't know what we would have -- we -- fortunately for us, we didn't have to face that --

AMANPOUR: Well, let me --

PERLBERG: And London is not --

AMANPOUR: Go ahead?

PERLBERG: -- and London is not Siberia as well, you know. So I do have -- I'm grateful for that circumstance. But for me, the issue is I'm an American and I'm entitled to live in the country that is my country and live out my happiness in that country with the person that I love.

AMANPOUR: Well, to that point, let me play something that the White House spokesman said recently, which is what President Obama thinks about this matter.

Not yours, but in general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president has long believed that Americans with same-sex partners from other countries should not be faced with the painful choice between staying with the person they love or staying in the country they love.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So I want to ask you both, A, do you have hope that this situation will change? And let me put to you what some of the key senators have said.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has said that they are -- there are so many big issues to deal with on this overall immigration reform before we even get to this issue that you're talking about.

Senator McCain said the issue is divisive and it would derail immigration reform.

So how soon do you think some new law would be adopted that would change your situation?

PERLBERG: Well, I personally think that both of those remarks are copouts. You know, the divisive issue is how do you provide immigration status for people who didn't follow the immigration procedure which is the custom? That is a divisive issue. Either side that you fall on that is necessarily a difficult question.

And people in our circumstance, Ben followed the procedure by the law, by the letter. We are not the divisive ones. And you know, the people who say that, who are unwilling to take the stand, you know, we're Americans. We're supposed to stand up for what we believe in when it's -- even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.

These are the same people who were against ending "Don't Ask/Don't Tell". So they're not failing to support our cause in this instance because it's divisive, because it's politically inconvenient. They're failing to support our cause because they don't believe in it. And I wish that they would just come out and say that and explain a rationale.

AMANPOUR: All right. Well, we are very happy that you were able to join us, Brandon and Ben, thank you very much indeed for sharing your story.

PERLBERG: Thank you.

STOREY: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And we'll be back with a final thought, right after a break.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, next week, of course, Pope Benedict will step down after eight years on the throne of St. Peter. But imagine a world leader four years older than the pope who's been in power for 33 years now, and shows no sign of calling it quits, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe turned 89 today.

And he's celebrated modestly by his standards with a cake and a gift of 89 cows. But a lavish birthday party is planned for next month, complete with a soccer match and an all-night concert at an estimated cost of $600,000. It's a hefty price tag for a country whose finance minister said last month that it had only $217 left in the bank; a $30 million infusion followed.

But Zimbabwe is still blighted by the economy and, of course, by its human rights record. And yet despite sanctions and calls for his resignation, when Zimbabweans go to the polls later this year, Robert Mugabe says he'll be on the ballot, hoping for a sixth term.

That's it for tonight's program. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

END