For all her issues economy.as well as for his attitude Costas Karamanlis after deleting it Antonis Samarasthe Minister of National Economy and Finance spoke, Kostis Hatzidakis to .

“I am sure that Kostas Karamanlis, whose minister I was, will once again rise to the occasion. He does not expect lessons from me, he has a long loyalty to the party with a long track, so I have no doubt about his placement, just as I have no doubt about the attitude of the ND MPs, in the sense that the popular mandate is still fresh and it is clear that with the governments of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece has progressed and has climbed several steps”, as pointed out by Mr. Hatzidakis.

To a question about whether the government’s stability is at risk, he replied that in politics it makes no sense to look for continuous calm and stability and when there are differences, they are discussed through intra-party dialogue. “Now what is the issue that could have divided us, the suspicions of what Mr. Gerapetritis? This is all a bit ridiculous. I firmly believe that nothing will happen. If it happens, it will be like a shipwreck in the harbor. It would be unfair and inexplicable for the course of the country, efforts have been made, sacrifices have been made by the Greek citizens. What are we going to do, blow it all up, waste it and stop all this for some superego and some internal differences of ours?’

“Emphasis on reducing direct taxes that are more visible to the middle class”

As for her Greek economy and the operation against it tax evasionthe minister emphasized that in all the economies of the world, in order to move forward and support the public treasury, there is first of all the recipe for development, so that revenues can increase in a healthy way. “In Greece since the establishment of the Greek state, there was the problem of tax evasion, a second area of ​​attention. Already in 2023, it’s an effort that intensified and we said that here there can’t be some people who pay continuously and some other cunning and clever ones who avoid it”, as he characteristically said, while at the same time he also referred to the example of POS and the interface with cash registers machines.

“Tourists come here, pay for their purchases and then put this money in their pocket without the tax authorities seeing it. And what did we say? We will connect Greek businesses and their POS with their cash registers. When we started it, too many people said “don’t do it”. The new company D.E.O.S. is the new application of AADE to deal with major tax evasion and smuggling. Beyond that, however, it is not an end in itself to only collect money, we must also dispose of it. The emphasis is to reduce direct taxes, because this is more visible to the citizens.”

Furthermore, explaining the surpluses, he clarified that 1.8 billion euros of which was due to tax evasion, while regarding the possibility of a reduction in indirect taxes, he said:

“With our own government, indirect taxes have already been reduced, such as VAT on catering, tourism, transport, for farmers. We have more products and services with an average rate of 13% compared to Europe. We also have comparative data showing that Greece in 2023 had the largest tax reduction in the entire EU as a percentage of GDP, falling from 42.8% to 40.7%. This shows that because of our economic model it means that with less taxes we have more revenue