Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a surprise visit to the OSY depot in Renti shortly after 6 am on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister was accompanied by the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Christos Staikouras.

After the end of the information he had, the prime minister speaking to SKAI said: “We did not wait for the European elections to launch a central commitment of the government, the emphasis we place on public transport and specifically the rapid replacement of the entire fleet of old buses in Athens and Thessaloniki. I have said many times that the image of our buses does not fit a modern prosperous European country in the 21st century. The last new buses were added to the fleet in 2009, at the time of the onset of the great financial crisis. Today we are in 2024 and for the first time there are 250 new electric buses on the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki and many more to come. By the end of 2025 we will have a total of 900 new buses in Athens and Thessaloniki, which are environmentally friendly and above all accessible to everyone, including citizens with disabilities.

If you also make a report and see the before and after and the satisfaction of the citizens for the obvious, but sometimes in our country the obvious is the question, and the satisfaction of the drivers too, because they are much safer, we also complete the charging infrastructure so that when these buses are not moving, they can quickly charge and get back on the road.

At the end of 2025, the first phase of the renewal will be ready with 900 new buses in Athens and Thessaloniki, and another tender for 700 additional buses will follow, which we intend to complete as soon as possible. The emphasis on everyday issues is continuous. It is a commitment of this government and we will stick to this goal.

We are not doing anything different from what we have been doing for the last five years. What you are seeing right now is the implementation of government commitments that have been in place for some time. 250 new buses do not suddenly appear on the streets of Athens if there has not been a very systematic pre-work and I want to remind here that these buses that you see now are financed by the Recovery Fund which has very strict milestones in order to achieve our goals. Therefore, turning to the everyday small and big problems of the citizen is the first obligation of this government and I will repeat the very great importance we give to public transport in Athens and Thessaloniki. We want to encourage people to use public transport. If you look at the absolute numbers you will see that in the last 15 years there has been a decline in the use of buses as well.

And this is to some extent justified because unfortunately the quality of the services we provided were not what the citizens would expect. We are changing that.”