No use shopping around for a less expensive lawyer or notary, for instance. They all charge fixed fees, as do many other professions. There are numerous restrictions on licenses, too. Some are not even available to some classes of citizens. For instance, newsstand licenses are reserved for war veterans, the disabled and those with large families to support. Others are limited, like the number of long-haul trucking licenses, which has been frozen for 25 years.

A study carried out by IOBE in 2006 estimated that opening these professions would increase gross domestic product by about $35 billion, or 10 percent, in five years.

But nobody expects change to be easy. Already, austerity measures in Europe have prompted unrest here and elsewhere. Thursday saw strikes by civil servants protesting cutbacks in Athens and in France. Many believe that tackling closed professions will mean even more groups taking to the streets.

That is what happened this summer when the government took on the trucking industry. Greece has issued only a few new licenses for truckers since 1970, though Greece’s economy has more than tripled in that time. This created a hot market for the licenses, which have sold at prices approaching $500,000. Not surprisingly, experts say, trucking costs in Greece are far higher than anywhere else in the European Union.

The IOBE report found it was more expensive to truck something from Athens to Thebes, about 45 miles, than from Athens to Rome, a distance of more than 600 miles. Businessmen say it is cheaper to ship goods here from China than it is to move them from Athens to the island of Rhodes, 285 miles away.

But when the government announced that it would begin issuing new licenses over the next three years, the truckers blocked the borders for weeks, creating shortages of all kinds, including fuel. Mr. Papandreou invoked an emergency regulation to force the truckers back to work.

Within a few weeks, however, work stoppages began again. The truckers did not cease their occasional blockades until Parliament passed a new law that could see them lose their licenses altogether.