“The bad loans, today, have entered a regulation process and the economy and the banking system are returning to a normal function. And this was achieved without having mass evictions and mass housing loss.” he emphasized the Deputy Minister of Finance, Theodoros Skylakakis, answering his topical question SYRIZA member of parliament, Vassilis Kokkalis, on the protection of the first home.

The Deputy Minister of Finance said that his prediction is that “we will not have massive first home losses and massive auctions. Those involved will be able, with the “tools” we have created, to settle most of their loans.” He acknowledged that “obviously there will be a part of auctions that will take place, but it will be to the extent that existed in the years before the crisis. As the economy develops, this part will be limited.”

He mentioned that we have over 100,000 loans that have gone from “red” to “green” again through the arrangements – agreements that have been made between debtors and funds, without having to resort to the out-of-court mechanism or bankruptcy law procedures”. And this “is a positive development” and “in this sense we solve this big problem created by the crisis”.

Mr. Skylakakis said that “Primary home protection is one part of the overall bankruptcy process. Greece, unfortunately, until 2020 did not have a real bankruptcy procedure for natural persons. A natural person, when he went bankrupt, had no way to get rid of his obligations and remained captive to his accumulated debts. The new Bankruptcy Law, brought in by this government, put in place a framework whereby individuals can be freed, once and for all, from their debt and at the same time put in place a framework to protect the primary home of vulnerable households, ensuring that they do not find themselves outside their home, while at the same time they will have a lot of time to be able to recover it, as long as at least a part of their debt is paid”.

The deputy finance minister acknowledged that “there is no easy solution to the problem of protecting the first home, especially for non-vulnerable households that also have additional assets”.

Mr. Skylakakis also noted that with a recent amendment, the funds have been pressured to proceed more quickly in arranging bad loans.

SYRIZA MP Vassilis Kokkalis, for his part, argued that today there is no possibility of protecting the first home. He charged the government that “is concerned not with protecting the first home of the vulnerable, but with how they will go bankrupt in banking terms.” He stated that only 48 citizens have been judged as vulnerable and are using their houses as “renters” through the process of the extrajudicial mechanism. He claimed that out of the 60,000 applicants, approximately 3,500 have joined the extrajudicial mechanism as of February 20, without it being known in what percentage their debts were written off. The member of parliament emphasized that citizens who cannot meet their loan obligations should be given the opportunity to save their first home. He underlined that according to Eurostat data, home ownership in our country from 2019 to the end of 2021 decreased by almost 2%.