The belief that Greece is facing a period of important opportunities, having now conquered political and economic stability, expressed by the Minister of National Economy and Finance and President of the Eurogroup, Kyriakos PierrakakisDuring his visit to Patras.
Speaking on the "Metropolis" show of Ionian TV, Mr Pierrakakis stressed that the country and its regions should continue to invest in the development, extroversion and creation of new prospects, while warning that the acquis of political stability should not be jeopardised.
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In detail the interview of the Minister of National Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis.
Journalist:We have the pleasure and honor to host today the Minister of National Economy and Finance and President of the Eurogroup Mr.Kyriakos Pierrakakis, on the occasion of his visit to Patras. Mr Pierrakakis, good evening and thank you very much for being here.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: Good evening, it's a great pleasure to chat.
Journalist:You've been meeting since this morning here in Patras with operators. The first stop was in the port of Patras. We heard earlier, we also saw reports of your statements there. From everything you said with the Regional Governor of Western Greece and at your meeting with members of the Achaia Chamber, Western Greece does not have the growth rates that other regions have, but we see something changing. I imagine you also found that out with the contacts you had, so it is also an answer to all that is said that “we are not looking very much at the District”.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: I assure you, something is changing. I felt it clearly in my contacts with operators and returning to the city, in the eyes of the citizens. But what I'm going to tell you is that even more things can change in the future. The issue is what I felt and said in the morning after the meeting we had at the port. We want a city and a country, I say, introverted or extroverted? A city, a Patra, opened to the world or a Patras which is closed and introverted? I just had a meeting in the Chamber that showed me the history of the Chamber from the 19th century.
There are many beautiful stories in the past of the city and in how it was a gateway to business. No one needs to know the story of “Stafids” and “Gustas Klaus” to get into depth about what happened here. But I think we have even greater prospects around the University of Patras and around investments that can be made at the centre of the port and in general by exploiting all the possibilities of both the city and the county. I encode in one word: optimism.
Journalist:I want to talk a lot, because we are being asked by the citizens, you know our viewers see them on the street, we have this direct contact here with the regional media and we want to know more about the new measures on citizens' debts. How quickly will relief be seen in practice by those who find it difficult to meet their obligations with the new measures you announced?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: Right now, in the summer, because the law in which we incorporate all these measures will have been passed well having things in Parliament next week. And here I must remind you that we have a number of measures. It is the biggest package on private debt after the crisis. Whether we're talking about 72 installments, or we're talking about the expansion of the extrajudicial, we've got a fall to the entry limit from 10,000 to 5,000 euros, or we're talking about how we change the extrajudicial... What have people been asking us for for so many years? Effective protection of first residence. In my opinion, the Katseli Act did not succeed. Because there's still people running in court. And those who should and those who shouldn't. We're turning the extrajudicial into a tool protecting the first residence. More and more of our fellow citizens discover what an extrajudicial weapon can be in their hands.
And even arrangements, like the Swiss franc. How many years have we heard this? About 50% of Swiss borrowers have already entered the arrangement and even more people have been asking to study it further in depth and get in and we have extended it until the end of September. All this together is tools. And you know that, among others, and on the day I announced the increase in the limit of the unrestrained from 1,250 to 1,600 euros in the House in a question by Stratos Simopoulos, our Member from Thessaloniki, how many messages I received on my phone and how many citizens came to talk to me about it in the next few days when I was in Athens in contact with the world in my constituency.
There are a lot of people who need a state that gives him the hand and who doesn't shake his finger. And we are talking about people who want to pay, we are talking about debts that accumulated during the difficult years of the crisis, we are talking about people who, as they say, simply, in a phrase, on the street when they meet me “we want to get our heads out of the water”.
Journalist:These people feel trapped. So they change things for them actually.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: Exactly. They're tools in their hands. And there are many tools we give. Even the Institution, which deals with the properties it will acquire and will be able to lease it for you and who will operate in autumn – which we have also discussed for several years. We already have a contractor. The Acquisition and Rerenting Agency is another tool to protect the first residence, where you will be able to stay in your property for up to 12 years with a government-backed lease, low, and in the end acquire your property again. I've mentioned, as long as we talk, a series of measures.
The measures are a lot. And, to catch the question, private debt is a smaller problem in Greece than it is in other countries in Europe. I start with statistics, fatally and because of my capacity, private debt in the rest of Europe is an average of 121% of GDP. In Greece it is 94.5%, it is lower. But, will you tell me “is not a problem?” Of course it is, but it is not systemic, as it is in other countries - but you have a social problem when even one person needs your help. So you have to give it to him. And as long as this problem exists, the more tools we give them.
Their problem is our problem. That's how we deal with it, and that's how I deal with it personally.
Journalist:Speaking of this, “even one has a problem. ‘ We've had a complaint from a child with heavy hearings who has reached you. You contacted her, eventually went on to regulate and unrestrained the hearing aid. Is it an example of how a problem of everyday life can reach the Ministry and provide a solution? Because you know very well that the impression citizens have is that in the ministries the doors are closed. Ministers don't see our everyday lives.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: That was an absurdity that had to be solved. I'm not hiding from you that when I saw the story with that kid, I was touched. The state produces many injustices. In 2019 what were the people saying to Kyriakos Mitsotakis? They said “make a state”. With digital we managed to solve too many problems. We have 2,257 services in gov.gr, yesterday there were, they're growing. We have digitized a lot, but on the other hand we have so many injustices still in our state that have accumulated in decades. And we have to solve them one by one, we have to learn them one by one. They cause problems sometimes even as extreme as what you said. I am very glad that we have managed to solve this even in the time we have given it.
And any other such problem that will reach all of us, me, my team, I assure you that we will be on top and solve it. Because at the end of the day that's our job. That's why we're there. There are statistics, there are macroeconomic indicators, all of which the country has been accused of in recent years, ten years ago. We almost flirted with the abyss as a country. We solve all this, we solved it. But at the end of the day, the opportunity, development, must be translated well for the everyday life of every citizen. The minimum is not to have a state which is Leviathan. Don't have a state that produces unnecessary bureaucracy, hurts people and has analgesia. The state must shake the hand, not shake the finger. That's what we're trying to do. We also use technology to do this better. We certainly need to solve a series of such injustices.
Journalist:In fact, in everyday life we will stay now and I want to ask if the expansion of payments helps so much households that are pressed daily or need other so bolder interventions.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: As you can see, we don't stop, every week we announce other measures. 72 installments concern 1.5 million citizens. The extrajudicial is about a million citizens. If you put them down, how many are the potential beneficiaries of each measure, the perimeter is too large. And as I told you, who is the target? Let me just say, whoever wants to pay, can. Anyone who wants to get their head out of the water and really wants to keep what he agrees to, why not help him do it? That is the obligation of the state, the state and the government, and that is what we are trying to do with these measures. I think we will find that it is absolutely beneficial.
I heard criticism from the Opposition about the Swiss franc regulation. 50% of the citizens are already in regulation and we are expanding it now. I do not need to answer as Minister of Finance about the quality of regulation. The citizens themselves who belong to it respond.
So step by step we learn, improve, create policies and move. And what I can assure you because there is a very big debate on elections, when the elections will be held - it is the number one issue that exists in political debates - and us, and the Prime Minister, and we are much more interested in the government than the election.
And I can tell you that every day that passes, every week that passes, every month that passes, you will see constant changes in the field. Changes concerning the world. Not old-style political vocabulary, not old-style political competition. We're over this. Policy concerns the future and policy concerns the here. It's about the problem the other guy has in the field. For this reason, as I am today in Patras, we will turn all over Greece, go city-town, road-road to see what we can do to solve the self-evident, which must be solved, but from then on and all that releases the dynamics of a place and solve daily social problems.
Journalist:The tours of course by some are also interpreted as early elections. 2027?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: In 2027, as the Prime Minister has said. That's not the job we do. When you're in the field, you learn. And when you see the problem in front of you, you pick up a phone and you solve it. And many times we have solved such problems. Because when there are thousands of subjects, they are many and many small, a small problem can be decisive for a person's life or family. If you can solve it at that time, you have to do it. And it really helps to be there. Be with the world.
Journalist:Energy. Too big a topic, too big a problem we face every day. Energy remains expensive.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: I will agree with you and say that this is a Europe-wide problem, not just a national problem. In my other capacity, that of the President of the Eurogroup, I have also tried before the Straits of Hormuz were closed before the crisis in the Middle East occurred, we had put the issue of energy costs in the Eurogroup. Why? Because, by fact, there is an imbalance.
The best social policy you can do among others, especially in such crises, is to reduce energy costs for a household. At the same time Europe cannot talk about competitiveness unless it is able to solve this equation. We must be able to obtain much more competitive energy. We do not have a single European energy market. There are countries that are much cheaper than others. We, as a country, must make more investments. We know what needs to be done. You want investment in networks, you want investment in storage, and you want investment in the connections you can make with other countries.
If you do these three together, you have the ability along with the innovations that exist in the field of energy to actually reduce its cost and this to touch every household and every business. Over the next few years, Europe will prioritise this, and I assure you with my other role. It has entered the table at the level of leaders and at the level of finance ministers. We know what to do. And we know what investment needs to be made. And the energy escape clause which is now being introduced at the initiative of the Commission, which has already been discussed in the Eurogroup, has this character. What's he saying? For Greece, for example, it says that we will have a space, for two years, of 1.5 billion euros, to make such investments and I think they are much more productive and for the following reason:
I'll report a study. I don't want to bore you with a lot of statistics, but I'll mention one: The International Monetary Fund has recently said that the impact of the Middle East crisis is 12% smaller in Europe than it would have been because of the investments we made in energy networks after 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. What does that mean? It's much more effective to make permanent changes to infrastructure and investment to help every citizen and every business than to go and make quick moves at that time. Sometimes you're forced to do them too, because you have to support the people who have a problem, but you support them more effectively with long-term moves.
Journalist: But when will the citizen see all this relief in the accounts?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: ...with a mixture of measures. There will be some measures, already there are, such as what we have announced in recent times. You had seen that we went on to support the price of diesel, and with regard to the price of unleaded through the fuel pass, but from then on, for investment in energy, first we should launch decisions at European level on what exactly those investments we can support with the EUR 1.5 billion - that will still take some time - and then we will launch them one by one. I assure you that our goal is - the answer to your question - as soon as possible.
Journalist: Minister, what social group do you think needs more support today?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: I wouldn't prioritise one. It's wrong to do it. Policy is addressed to the whole society. All social groups were affected during the years of the crisis. If we look backwards in the difficult decade of our country, have the young people who saw their dreams be undermined not hurt? Weren't retired people who had to support their entire family through his pensions? Aren't those who saw their jobs in danger, their wages falling? The whole country goes up or down according to its fate and perspective. And in recent years things have been getting better and better. We have created 600,000 jobs. Growth is twice the European average and unemployment is about to reach the historical low. And Greece is a stable country. It's very important. All of this is positive. I'll tell you, too, there are a lot of loose ends, aren't there? Don't we want better paid employees? Isn't there precision that's been bothering people? I know very well that when I talk about macroeconomic indicators, people in the supermarket fund do not think about macroeconomic indicators - they think about how the month will come out - or when they pay their rent. But it is necessary for the country to do well to make this translation.
And I'll tell you that it's getting more and more for more and more people. And the only way that this translation can be fully done is to build Greece and constantly build every city, such as Patras. Better her prospects, give birth to growth. There's no other recipe than that. Because at the end of the day we tested the other recipe and it cost too much for all social groups.
So, like the ICU he passed, what was the Prime Minister's strategy? The biggest tax exemption for post-policing with a reduction in direct taxes which had some targeting: first, young people, young people under 25 who enter the labour market, at the lowest scales, are zeroed. Corresponding to the many children. And taxes have been cut too much based on how many kids you have and on where you live. ENFIA is extinguished in 12,000 settlements in our country with less than 1,500 inhabitants. Just because the demographic dimension of our problem is such that we must support both families with children and young children entering the profession and those living in the Greek region. There was a strategy behind this. But eventually it was all about them. The policy must therefore concern every social group. That's what we'll do this year.
Journalist: By the end of your term, I want to ask. You said before, you don't want to put priorities, you don't want to put accusations on people and society, but I want to ask about you, until the end of your term, what is this biggest financial issue that you would like to have solved?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: We put priorities and put in too many things every day. What I wouldn't say easily is how you prioritise social groups. But if you tell me a problem, without using the word "solved" - because there are problems that you solve and there are problems that you manage and you improve them all the time. The residential (sacred) is such a problem. Because when we say "accuracy", I think of three things: the supermarket shelf, energy and rents. And rents in our country because they started from an existential crisis very low, increased more than other countries in this period, because we were in nadir, literally. Have we done much for this matter? We do all the time: even the policy of returning one rent, two for public servants - based on tax returns, at 86% of tenants - is a policy that supports the world that wants to rent a house. Other such policies, such as My House I, My House II and a number of things are in this category.
I am not hiding from you that part of the decision to put the residential problem in the Eurogroup by me was this: to teach the Ministers from each other, because this is not a European issue. Energy is a deep European issue with decisions taken centrally. The issue of housing policy is a matter for national governments more. But part of the initiative I received to put it in the Eurogroup what was it? The Finance Ministers - because they are basically dealing with the central aspect of the matter in relation to taxation - must learn from one and from what it works and from what it does not work in a country, based on differences between countries.
So if I had to choose a subject, that's it. And other things will happen in this direction.
Journalist: So as president of the Eurogroup, what do you see as the biggest challenge to Greece?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: I would not call you 'a challenge' with a negative sign. Greece has the huge challenge with the positive sign that it can generate even greater growth in every corner. I'm in a city that underlines this, it's translucent. The port gave me a very strong feeling that it could become a development platform wider.
All this requires a way of thinking about opening up to the world. Don't be closed, open to a logic that keeps looking at how you give birth to growth, how you magnify the prospects of a place. Our country has huge opportunities ahead of it. He has conquered political stability, he must not lose it. He has conquered fiscal stability. We have been discussing for ten years whether we will have deficits and now we are discussing surpluses, how and who we will support most.
(We are a country that) reduces its debt faster than any other country in the world. And this is very important. It bothers me when I hear him underestimate it. Because I also belong to a generation that took the bill from the previous one. It's very important to say that you won't give the bill to the next. And it is very unfair to be unincriminated when you talk about debt by saying "let's add more debt" : that's what all previous generations did and the place went bankrupt. Haven't we heard? The Opposition very often gives me the feeling that he learned nothing and forgot nothing.
So what's our job? To release these possibilities, so if I have to say it in a schematic manner: more and more opportunities ahead of us. Keeping the good we've done, we have potential for even more.
Journalist: Who now wants to ask, why did you talk about the Opposition, could be the greatest risk to the stability and management of the Greek economy in a possible change of political leadership?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: If you mean face, I won't get into it. I think we should think backwards. Politicians run programs. Mitsotakis is interested in the ruling, not the election. We have a very specific programme and a very specific view of what needs to be done. Not just for Economy, Energy, Education, Health. For each city, for every place.
I invite you to have this debate in depth with the Opposition, because I have seen the programmes of the Opposition parties and I have seen what they say as criticism of the government. Take, for example, PASOK and Syriza. We announced a program at the ICU. What is the mature function that a European Opposition should do in my opinion? To say that "if the space is this, I would make that priorization. I disagree with you on how you handled this 1.76 billion euros" When the Opposition comes and makes a 4 billion-euro program in one party and 6 billion euros in the other party, treating as if this money exists... But they don't exist, because if they did, I assure you we would. There are only if you tax specific social categories.
As many times in the past I heard opposition parties, such as Mr. Tsipras, Syriza, say they would tax wealth, they taxed the middle class. It's not me, that's the historical reality. That's why we need to talk about the real thing. The greatest risk of the wrong program, do you know who he is? Not having any schedule, just having cheesy. A '80s and '90s vocabulary that you repeat and not be prepared at all for what is coming.
Because a prime minister, and I have experienced it myself with the Prime Minister, must, on the one hand, solve historical unfinished business, release the country's development potential and every place, and on the other hand respond to the unforeseen. To have at that time reflexes on something you have not imagined, whether that was the invasion of Evros, or it was Covid, or it is any issue that can arise – e.g. close the Straits of Hormuz – to have a government and a head of it, who can very quickly make decisions, not have to waste time to take them and implement them. And if something doesn't work to fix it quickly.
Do you know how hard this whole thing is? That's our job. That's why we're there. So I ask the obvious, rhetorical question: Who can respond to this? I wish a lot of people could. I hope that the Opposition parties will put this bar on themselves and not the bar of the easy "chitato" or the easy phrase or the associations of civil war.
You know, we're in the age of Artificial Intelligence, we're talking about the effects of the Straits of Hormuz, about energy supply chains, about how to reduce energy costs for every household, that is, real problems in the field. Who has anything to say about them in particular? I'm really happy to have this conversation. Because that's politics. Politics is not the "chitato".
Journalist: If I asked you to describe, according to everything you have in mind, in a year's time the financial situation of the citizens, what would that be?
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: More opportunities and fewer risks for the country. Increasing the world's income even more, step by step, in a way that is clear, concrete and neat, and constantly improving the country's perspective and fate. It is absolutely possible and will continue to be done.
Journalist: I want to thank you very much for being here.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis: Thank you, too.