“The climate does not change with these types of benefits just before we go to the polls,” stressed Mr Alexis Tsipras in an interview in Alpha’s main bulletin, on the occasion of today’s announcements by the Prime Minister and in particular about the retired. He commented that “they accused SYRIZA of having a welfare policy, but it gave to the vulnerable, to the weak. Today the middle class survives on vouchers and this is a supposedly liberal government.”

The president of SYRIZA-PS said that “we had come out of a prolonged memorial period and it was the possibility of the Greek economy for the first time to provide some benefits that we had institutionalized as permanent not once and shortly before the elections”. “Today while the Mitsotakis government deprived pensioners of 7 billion by abolishing the permanent 13th pension that we had legislated in 2019 – it is about 4.5 billion in four years and 2.6 billion retroactively to pensioners – he announces 300 million while he has not given 7 billion” he said and commented: “Sounds like a tip to me to get to the polls,” he commented.

Mr. Tsipras said the program he presented in Thessaloniki is item-by-item costing “and indeed we foresee some increases that are offset by increases in revenue.” He said in particular that “when you have 10% inflation it is obvious that there should be an increase in the minimum wage and not only that”. He pointed out that SYRIZA before inflation reached 10% he had said a floor of 880 euros and the introduction of annual indexation and 10% increases for civil servants. He noted that when there is a 40% reduction in purchasing power for the average pensioner in the last year, and increases in supermarkets, petrol, energy, “then somehow the citizens have to live”.

“For the pensions, we say very measuredly, that we have to give the retroactive payments – the retroactive payments are not on a permanent basis, they are 2.5 billion in three installments – and that the arrangement we had made and had foreseen as permanent for the 13th pension within the framework of the fiscal possibilities, it will come back”, he emphasized. He also reiterated that the SYRIZA proposal is absolutely cost-effective to reduce VAT and VAT to deal with profiteering, “because this costs 3 billion per year, but at the same time from the maintenance of high indirect taxes and with inflation of 10% the excess income in the public coffers is over 4 billion”. He accused Mr. Mitsotakis of “maintaining this state profiteering in order to be able to give some subsidies which, however, are also directed to keep prices high in energy companies, refineries and supermarkets”.