Greeks and Tourists Choke on Europe's Priciest Coffee

Amid a welter of rising prices, citizens of Greece and its tourist visitors are shocked and dismayed to find it is offering Europe's priciest cup of coffee.

At an average €3.40 or £2.38, a refreshment taken in view of the Acropolis is almost double the price of a cup of coffee by the Eiffel Tower, and €1 more than a cup bought outside the Colosseum.

And, at an average €0.90, or 65p, a bottle of water is more expensive in Greece than anywhere else in the eurozone.

The cost of living in Athens is now higher than either Madrid or Lisbon, according to a survey by the British-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting group. Athens jumped 40 places from 111th to 71st in the world list of costly capitals last year.

The change is due, in part at least, to Europe's switch to the euro currency on January 1 2002. Across the eurozone, retailers rounded up prices when abandoning their national currency and brought protests from consumers.

But since then, in Greece some goods have risen as much as 200%, particularly in resorts and restaurants.

Even access to public beaches, once the symbol of the free and easy lifestyle of the Greeks, has become a costly affair, according to To Bima tis Kyriakis, a respected Athenian weekly. A beach ticket costs as much as the entry fee to a nightclub in Majorca, it reported.

The surge in prices has got many people reaching for the telephone. "Greeks and foreigners, a lot of foreigners, have been calling in to complain about inflated prices," said Haralambous Kouris, who heads INKA, Greece's independent consumers' association. "They're really distressed."

It was not just tourists who felt some Greeks were cashing in on the advent of the single currency, he said.

With wages averaging €1,141 a month, eurozone Greece has unexpectedly become expensive for its own people; the average wage across the eurozone is €2,141, according to the EU's Eurostat calculations.

"If we take into account the number of hours Greeks work, in relation to other Europeans, to acquire exactly the same goods, then we can only conclude that we live in the most expensive country in Europe," said Mr Kouris.

League tables released by the consumers' association show that the average Greek works 95 hours and 46 minutes to buy a typical supermarket basket of 100 items, a basket that would take the average Briton 57 hours and 10 minutes' labour to buy. An EU Eurobarometer survey this week reported that, with a rise of 9.9%, Greece topped all other eurozone countries for price increases on food and drinks in the past year.

Unsuprisingly, the Greeks also came out top of those in the eurozone who said they found the economic situation "very disturbing".

Hard to swallow

Cup of coffee

Greece €3.40

Italy €2.40

France €1.85

Ireland €2.80

Glass of beer

Greece €4.50

Italy €4.35

France €5.50

Ireland €3.50

· Figures provided by Greek consumer group INKA