I don't know about Greece, but I grew up in Portugal, and I suspect there are some similarities. People in Portugal "work" long hours. But they also work in a very infective way: long useless meetings, everything requires lengthy social interactions, bizantine bureaucracy, too many managers for too few real workers and so on. There are complex cultural problems that cannot be expressed by such simplistic metrics (and that, unfortunately, cannot be solved with quick fixes).
I'm also from Portugal but I have been working in London for some time now. Curiously, I don't see much of a difference besides now working only from 9 to 6 instead of working from 9 to 10. Same useless meetings, a very long line for coffee all day long, everyone is a manager, etc.
My opinion is a simple one: some countries sell stuff others want, some don't. We were just unlucky and not smart enough to value our geographical position in the world.
Have you guys ever worked for a big company in the United States? Because I have some news for you...
Seriously though, it's interesting to hear these opinions about the sources of work inefficiency inside the EU. I'm American but lived in Italy for several years in the late 90s, and "Why is our economy so inefficient?" was a common topic of discussion at the time. Almost no one thought it was because of long meetings or too many managers; there seemed to be a consensus among the people I spoke with that the number one problem was the type of regulation mentioned above (e.g. not being able to sell books after 18h in a bookstore).
It's important to realize that lots of those regulations do actually have a purpose, which is to keep certain sectors of the economy dominated by small sole proprietorships instead of by big corporations. Again with the bookstore example, a Borders or Barnes and Noble or any other big box store chain would just give up on such a market. On the other hand, an owner/operator of a small bookstore would either find loopholes (like this owner's swap with the cafe owner across the street) or else they just grease the right palms and work around the rules. In either case, success depends on the kind of social capital big corporations will never have.
TL;DR The purpose of these "senseless" regulations is to keep shops in Europe small and charming. Inefficiency is the tradeoff.
As a portuguese also, I totally subscribe this. Hence the reason I don't work in/for Portugal anymore, and I won't until this mentality is gone for good.
