George Vassiliou is a very well-respected man in Cyprus. The country’s president from 1988 to 1993, he also headed the negotiating team for the accession of Cyprus to the EU in 2004. Mr Vassiliou still has a lot of supporters in the country, including the taxi driver who picked this writer up from a meeting with the former president and described him as one of the greatest politicians of the age. People listen when Mr Vassiliou speaks, and so when he says the Cypriot economy is recovering and that confidence is returning, it counts.
“The fact is, the crisis essentially destroyed the image of Cyprus as a sound place to invest deposits,” says Mr Vassiliou. “That was the situation in March 2013, and, as a result, people did not deposit their money in the banks. They kept it at home, they bought safes. And it is estimated that about €1.5bn is still in homes because of this lack of confidence.