A/HRC/32/50/Add.1 I. Introduction 1. At the invitation of the Government, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance visited Greece from 4 to 8 May 2015. 2. The Special Rapporteur travelled to the capital city, Athens, as well as the neighbouring districts of Thrakomakedones and Spata in the Attica region. He met with representatives from the Government, at the national and regional levels; the legislative and judicial branches; and the security forces. He is particularly honoured to have met, despite their busy agendas, the Ministers of Health; Interior and Administrative Reconstruction; and Justice, Transparency and Human Rights, as well as the Alternate Minister for Migration. 3. In addition, the Special Rapporteur met with representatives of the National Commission for Human Rights, the Greek Ombudsperson, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations, community members and other groups and individuals working in the field of racism, as well as migrant workers and asylum seekers. 4. The Special Rapporteur wishes to express his sincere gratitude to the Government for its cooperation and excellent coordination in the conduct of the visit. He is also grateful to the different state agencies for their cooperation. He is indebted to United Nations entities and his interlocutors from civil society for the excellent cooperation they extended to him throughout the visit. He hopes his conclusions and recommendations will contribute to finding concrete ways and means of addressing the challenges raised in the present report in an effective manner. II. Background 5. In recent history, Greece was invaded by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in 1940 and 1941, respectively. After the withdrawal of German forces in 1944, the existence of different resistance factions led to a civil war in 1946, which lasted until 1949, with the victory of the western-allied government forces, which helped define the ideological balance of power for the entire cold war period. In 1974, after seven years of rule by a military junta that suspended many political liberties, democratic elections and a referendum led to the current constitutional system of a parliamentary republic. In 1981, Greece joined the European Community, which later became the European Union, and adopted the euro currency in 2001. 6. Starting from 2009, Greece has been facing its worst economic crisis in recent times. The structurally weak Greek economy and the sudden crisis in confidence among its lenders resulted in a government debt crisis. This has been worsened by the ever growing trade deficit since joining the eurozone. In 2010, the Prime Minister of Greece, Georgios Papandreou, paved the way for the first of several bailout programmes from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission and the European Central Bank (the “troika”) of roughly €326 billion. This led to a drop in the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, even though per capita GDP was already about half that of leading eurozone economies. Under pressure from its creditors, Greece has seen the emergence of political tensions between the Government, opposition political parties and trade unions, leading to an extremely volatile political climate in which new extremist parties, including the violent neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, have gained ground. These circumstances ultimately led to the election of the left party Syriza in January 2015, and again in September of that year. Moreover, sharp reductions in public spending and public employment (150,000 3