Pandemic, EU billions drive Greece's digital revolution

Folders are seen on a bookcase at a Greek Manpower Employment Organisation (OAED) office in Kalamaki suburb near Athens, Greece, February 15, 2021. Picture taken February 15, 2021. REUTERS/Costas Baltas

ATHENS (Reuters) - Before COVID-19, visits to Greece's paper-strewn labour offices were a ordeal of queues and case files, often for basic matters that in less than a year have moved online as the pandemic upended old administrative routines.

"Essentially overnight, two thirds of the visits were no longer necessary," said Spiros Protopsaltis, head of OAED, the Organization of Employment and Unemployment Insurance.