The creation of a central register in which all beneficiaries of social benefits will be registered was announced by the Minister of Economy and Finance Kostis Hatzidakis. He stressed that the legislative regulation that will pave the way for the payment of emergency financial aid at Christmas will be tabled in November.

Speaking to ERT, Mr. Hatzidakis emphasized that: “The benefits should really go to those who need them and that is why the Ministry of Family and Social Cohesion reviewed the benefits. The budget is about the same but bigger, but the benefits now go to those who are poorer, to those who are more in need, rather than to those who have increased assets of their own.

This new policy was introduced. The Ministry of Labor is also in the process of revising the unemployment benefit, so that it is more effective, and we will come and make a central register of benefits, as is the case in Great Britain, in order to have an overall supervision of OPECA benefits and the benefits of the Ministry of Labor and for benefits like those we were talking about earlier.
The heating allowance and to know who gets what, why they get it.

There is no central registry and as a result there is no overall supervision.

There is no correlation of the allowances between them. Therefore, when you see the benefits in their entirety and not in the overall picture, you can draw safer conclusions and ultimately have a fairer policy, a more targeted policy, a more effective one.”

Revenue increases are tied to growth

At another point in his interview, Mr. Hatzidakis stated: “Revenue increases are absolutely linked to growth on the one hand and to the reduction of tax evasion on the other, thanks to the systematic efforts we are making.

If you exclude the climate change levy and the cruise levy which are basically on tourists that were imposed, otherwise the government has only done tax cuts, they’ve done over 60 tax cuts.
Of course there is more revenue in the budget, because the turnover in the market increases.
In the last 5 years we have more tourism.

I don’t think anyone disputes that. And at the same time with various government moves, such as the connection to the cash registers, we have more revenue. Those who say this and try to make a confusion between the above income and the above taxes. Tell us which taxes have been increased, I repeat, with the exception of these two.”

Mandatory implementation of IRIS from spring for the entire market

According to the Minister of Economy and Finance Kostis Hatzidakis, the application of IRIS will become mandatory for the entire market from March or April. So far there is an obligation for the self-employed, for freelancers to accept payments through the specific process, which ensures zero commissions up to 500 euros to the traders.

From there, what the Ministry of Finance is ready to change is to go to a ledger, to a universal application, so that all businesses, all professionals can accept the specific payments.

As Mr. Hatzidakis stated: “At the same time we are the ones promoting the IRIS system since we are talking about commissions which is a system with zero commissions, I repeat with zero commissions for transactions up to 500 euros from citizen to citizen and when you go with a freelancer we did it mandatory for freelancers and freelancers again zero fees for you and the freelancer, very low fees, much lower than POS and by March – April we will make it mandatory for the whole market.

And I am pleased that while we have 6 million and something IBANs across the country, already 3,300,000 IBANs are linked to IRIS precisely because they see that there are zero fees there.

So to all those who populistly repeat and repeat the same slogans, the government supposedly does not care about the banks and the supplies etc. we respond with specific policies and we are here, without of course proceeding to demagogic perceptions, but also without staying indifferent to any unfair practices.

We do not assign the monopoly of social sensitivity to anyone. We are trying to implement a serious economic policy that also has social characteristics, but in practice”.