A model which has changed the model of governance in the country was characterized by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgos Gerapetritis, in his speech at the meeting of the Presidency of the Government on the implementation in Greece of the model of the staff state in the production of legislation.

As he said, too much has been heard about the staff state: “The staff state is to blame for the fact that a village does not have water supply, for the fact that too much snow or too much rain fell”, he said and added:

“The reality is that the staff state is not here to formulate a policy treaty of each ministry, which will replace its basic constitutional function. It is to create standardized processes, which will be depersonalized.”

He noted that the model of the staff state began to be set up about two to two and a half years before New Democracy became the government, with him receiving a call from the prime minister asking if he would like to take it over by implementing ideas they had discussed.

As he said, although “this is the dream of any university student, who always finds theory easy and practice difficult”, “it was also a great challenge”.

“Because many times I hear how highly centralized the staff state is. Nothing more false,” he said. “The staff state does not concentrate powers, it restores the constitutional powers of all the organs of the state.”

“We worked for about two years and we were ready as soon as the government took over and received the vote of confidence in the government in 2019, to submit the first bill, which was a new model of governance, which adopted good practices.”

That is why, he pointed out, many different models were used: the German chancellery model in what concerns the structure of the state, the architecture of the presidency of the government, the Anglo-Saxon model in what concerns the part of good legislation and of lawmaking, Singapore’s system for the National Transparency Authority.

Mr Gerapetritis referred to the values ​​incorporated in the legislation for the staff state. First is the standardization of procedures, as until 2019 Greece was, as he said, the only European country which did not have a single governance manual.

Also for the first time the logic and practice of regular Ministerial Councils was introduced. From 2019 until now one or two cabinet meetings every month.

“The Council of Ministers, although according to the Constitution it is the producer of public policies, has never had periodicity. Now the Councils of Ministers are regular, with an agenda and there is not a single bill that has not gone through the judgment of the Council of Ministers before going up for public consultation”.

Now, he added, all legislation, all acts of the Council of Ministers have a digital signature. They are checked by the Ministers’ legal advisers and then signed by them. Huge savings in time, energy, but also a normal state finally in front of us.

For the first time, he said, the exact number of delegates each Minister, each Deputy Minister, each General or Special Secretary has is determined. “In these five years, there has not been a single deviation from this number.”

“The second major mission is the restoration of the constitutional mission of the institutions.” As he mentioned, until 2019 the cabinet meetings took place inside the Parliament building.

“The government, which must be completely separate from the Parliament, was meeting in the Parliament building itself. It may be a small move, but the fact that after the first solemn meeting in 2019, all Ministerial Councils since then take place at the seat of the government, in the Maximos Palace, is highly symbolic.”

Furthermore, for the first time in Greece “we have a distinction between the political leadership and the service administration”.

According to the staff state, we have a political leadership, which is the Ministers, Deputy Ministers, General and Special Secretaries and we now have a service administration, which is headed by the acting General Secretary.

Perhaps the biggest innovation brought by the new structure, according to Mr. Gerapetritis, is the official Secretary, who is selected by ASEP, based on very specific criteria of ability and experience, with a three-year term, comes from the administration and is the one who is actually in charge of the entire portfolio and the entire staff of the ministry.

Now, he said, all individual administrative acts are signed in the final instance by the General Director of the ministry.

“Imagine a building permit, a permit for the allocation of State property, a permit for the operation of a shop or stand. All these acts before 2019 belonged to the competence of the political leadership. A political person, usually the Minister himself, was the one who signed hundreds of thousands of individual ministerial decisions. Administration means that all these individual acts are issued by the hierarchy and that Ministers are to produce public policies, support them in Parliament and implement them in practice.

He also referred to the strides made in good legislation, as before 2019 every bill came with seven different reports, whereas today we have a single regulatory impact analysis, which is completely standardised.

“I always said that through complex legislation, corruption arose, because where there is no clear content of the law, a different point of view can be cultivated and ultimately corruption can be cultivated. For this reason, three manuals were issued by the General Secretariat of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs”.

He further pointed out that until 2019, “we had a rather humiliating use of the exceptional procedures provided for in the Constitution – urgent and urgent. In the last two years no urgent or emergency bill. All with the regular process. No overdue amendments and have reduced amendments overall from six to one on average.”

Before there was an incredible number of laws. “We have a polynomial and economy, which I think far exceeds the European average. In the last five years there have been nineteen codifications, which means simplification of procedures and above all means a clean law, an understandable law. A law that does not refer to the judge and the jurist, but refers to the citizen”.

As he pointed out, “what we lack is actually being able to monitor these laws. Where we can we give the necessary authorization and where we can avoid polynomiality, so that the environment becomes simpler.”

Regarding the coordination of responsibilities, the staff state envisaged a system in which there is a whole government coordination structure in the presidency of the government with the General Secretariat of Coordination, so that the whole project is monitored radially in all ministries.

“The coordination services of the ministries are in place so that there can be a continuous interaction to avoid the question of responsibilities. It is extremely important. We created a mechanism based on this, which can quickly respond to crises.”

As he explained, two and a half thousand ministerial decisions were issued in the two years of the coronavirus. “They all had a central coordination and control and 90% were signed by more than one minister, some even ten. If there was no central coordination of quick management of this matter, we could not have responded. So the radial system that is foreseen has helped substantially”.

With the staff state, three new interministerial branches of staff were also introduced: legal experts, digital policy and public policy analysis.

“The social accountability of the law has now come to a very different level. There is not a single primary bill, which has not been put up for public consultation for a sufficient time,” he said.

“Many of these were incorporated and improved the content of the law. The culture of public consultation has been cultivated, the need for a law to have real persuasion. And persuasion is achieved precisely with this. When the law has already become before its passing, the people’s public and the greatest form of accountability”.

He also noted, there is something called a unified government policy plan. It is essentially the government plan which is produced during the year.

“It’s the greatest form of government accountability there could be. Any citizen who wants to refer to the unified government policy plan, to criticize, to evaluate the government, can do so through it.”

As he explained, by coming to the elections, the citizen will be able to easily judge whether he really satisfied the government’s expectations in relation to what it has set for itself.

“Now we have a structured state, which can work. One of the things that needs to be done and improved is first of all the monitoring part, after the law comes into force. Because the law is passed but its implementation is something that must be done and done with great care”, he underlined.

“And of course we should always give great importance to regulatory acts, which are provided within the law and are in fact the means by which a law is implemented,” he concluded.