He accuses her of embezzlement and programming fraud SW The SYRIZA-PS in his statement and quotes as he says “the data regarding the real economic program of the ND, as it is reflected in the Stability Program that the government of the ND itself submitted last April to the European Commission:

Fact 1: The Stability Program includes only one of the measures of the pre-election program of New Democracy, that of the reform of the uniform public payroll from 2024 at a cost of 0.3%. The rest of the measures incorporated in the Baseline Scenario of the Stability Program are measures that have been in place for some time and are obviously not pre-election announcements for future implementation. A typical example is the application of the pension adjustment rule, based on inflation and A.E.P., pursuant to Law 4387 passed in 2016. The observance of this law in the following years is displayed by New Democracy as a pre-election announcement!

Fact 2: The appearance of measures that are already in force is not the only sleight of hand that New Democracy is attempting in its program. According to the Medium-term Fiscal Strategy Framework 2022-25, the planning of new hires – i.e. the general government’s recruitment-departure difference – in the three-year period 2023-25 ​​cumulatively adds up to 12,900. However, New Democracy is committed to 50,000 new net hires over four years in the cost of which, according to Mr. Schertsos, “has been included in the forecasts of the basic scenario of the Stability Program 2023-26”. So either the remaining 37,100 new net hires will be made at the end of this period with a very significant burden on the public payroll, or New Democracy is mocking Greek men and women. But if the first one is true, how is it that the public payroll increases at the end of the period with a meager 0.9%, the lowest rate of growth in four years?

Data 3: The fiscal space that it determines, with its own numbers, in the Stability Program does not exceed 0.3% of GDP in 2026. A series of measures included in her program remain uncosted and do not fit into the budget margin that she calculates. Indicatively, we mention the reduction of living expenses by 30%, the strengthening of 300 Health Centers with 5 mental health professionals per center, the guarantee of access to the EMS in 7 to 10 minutes in urban and semi-urban areas, the reduction by 50% of the waiting time for surgical actions, the reduction by 70% of the waiting time in the Emergency Departments, the increase of 50,000 places in nurseries, the establishment of 150 new Centers for Creative Employment of Children, the extension of the operating hours of nurseries until 17:30, the extension of full-day school hours and the extension of its application to kindergarten and primary school, the extension of supported employment for people with disabilities and the extension of the institution of personal assistants. For these measures, and for many others, there is no budgetary space. Either all of the above do not need resources in order to be implemented, or New Democracy has in mind a modern version of the miracle of feeding the five thousand.

The pre-election program of the New Democracy includes many measures that are already in effect, many measures without budgetary scope for implementation, as well as promises for recruitment for which the numbers of the Stability Program simply do not come out. However, it also includes measures that have been silenced and we list them below:

Fact 4: The public sector payroll is reduced, in terms of purchasing power of employees, by 730 million euros in the four-year period 2023-26. In the New Democracy press release, Mr. Skertsos disputes this, claiming that this calculation does not take into account the reductions in taxation that include the abolition of the solidarity levy, the abolition of the 1% withholding tax in favor of the Public Employees’ Welfare Fund, the reform of the payroll of NHS doctors, the settlement of salary requests of the armed forces, the introduction of incentives to achieve goals and the ongoing reform of the heavy and unhealthy. The claim of Mr. Schertsos is absolutely wrong. All the above measures are fully integrated in the Base Scenario of the Stability Program (see page 20 of the Program) and have therefore been taken into account in the calculation of the evolution of the wage bill in the four years 2023-26. The public sector payroll is reduced by 730 million euros, in terms of purchasing power of employees, despite these measures. In other words, these measures are not even enough to keep the purchasing power of public sector employees stagnant at 2022 levels. At the end of the 2023-26 quadrennial, the real income of public sector employees has fallen significantly.

Data 5: The real public consumption expenditure decreases in the four years 2023-26 by 1.1 billion or 10%. In the New Democracy press release, Mr. Skertsos does not deny the reduction in primary public consumption expenditure but attributes it to their normalization after 2022 as, as he says, “these expenditures were significantly increased last year, due to the unprecedented energy crisis where the public was forced to spend large sums on fuel and energy, costs which in the following years decrease as a reduction in international energy prices is observed”. Unfortunately for Mr. Schertsos, the reduction of primary public expenditure by 10% in the four years 2023-26 is in real terms, i.e. after the effect of inflation, and energy costs, has been removed from the corresponding nominal size. The big reduction takes place after 2023 when the relevant public consumption deflator moves on average below 2%. It is therefore a conscious reduction of public consumption, i.e. primary expenses in critical sectors of government operations that extend from public education, health, citizen safety, civil protection, such as forest firefighting, etc.

Data 6: The average nominal wage of salaried work in the four years 2023-26, increases by half of the pre-election promise of New Democracy – 12.8% instead of 25%. Here the New Democracy press release admits that the average nominal wage per employee actually increases by 12.8% by 2026 but predicts a further increase to 16% in 2027. It also predicts that the minimum wage increase over the four years by 21.8% will lead to a further boost in the average salary of employees by 9%. This prediction is completely unfounded. According to the OECD average wages, an equal increase in the minimum wage in Greece from February 2019 to May 2022 (21.7%) led to an increase in average nominal wages of less than 1%. The Stability Program also shows that, in terms of purchasing power, the average salary for wage labor in the four years 2023-26 will increase by just 1.3%, while average productivity growth over the same period is in the region of 7%. Simply put, while the pie grows, public and private sector employees do not benefit.

Fact 7: The New Republic used inflation as a hidden tax, collecting about 6 billion over and above the projections of the 2022 and 2023 budgets. In order to shift the discussion away from the excessive tax burden on households due to accuracy, the ND invokes the outperformance of VAT the increase in revenues from tourism and private consumption. However, receipts from the tourism sector according to the Bank of Greece in 2022 were 3% lower than in 2019, which obviously cannot lead to an increased VAT yield (VAT revenues were 20% more in 2022 compared to in 2019). At the same time, even the increase in private consumption by 7.8% in 2022 compared to 2021 that ND invokes is completely inconsistent with the almost threefold increase in VAT in the same period (increase of the order of 22%). So the reality is that the only size that can justify the exorbitant VAT revenue is the explosion of accuracy and the increased burden on consumers.

He then states: “the numbers of the Stability Program 2024-26 shed light on the real economic program of New Democracy, what it will implement if elected:

– Free pre-election promises without the fiscal margin to implement them.

– A real reduction in the salary of civil servants by 730 million cumulatively over the four years and a significant decline in their purchasing power.

-Real reduction of primary consumer spending in critical sectors of the public sector by 1.1 billion or 10% cumulatively over the four years.

-A real increase of only 1.3% of the average wages of wage labor cumulatively in the four years instead of a nominal increase of 25% promised while the national income increases in the same period by more than 10%.