The Minister of State Akis Skertsos responded to the objections of the opposition regarding OPEKEPE, on the occasion of his previous placement at a conference on Wednesday in Kalamata, with the following post:

“What Mr. Geroulanos (s.s. who was at the same table of the conference as the Minister of State) understood by watching my full presentation last Wednesday, without raising any issue about what I said regarding the issues of OPEKEPE, PASOK did not understand, proceeding two days later to cut and sew my statements.

If they read the whole of my posting they would understand that I was referring to the audits and reports of the competent bodies of the European Union which have over time pointed out the problems in the national system of declarations and payments of agricultural aid through OPEKEPE. But also in the perennial lack of cadastre, forest maps, grazing management plans and ATAK to have effective cross-checks. In other words, the lack of critical pillars of intersections that no government before the ND took care to cover, but on the contrary, they have been a priority of our own government since 2019.

In no case therefore did I refer to the judicial investigations.

On the contrary, I spoke explicitly about the action plan for the transformation of OPEKEPE which the Greek government and the European Commission are jointly implementing as early as 2024, long before the audits of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office took place.

Finally, it is now known that since 2019 the administrations of OPEKEPE had started the cross-checks by forwarding to the Greek Justice for further investigation suspicious applications for aid, many of which have already resulted in convictions.

Coal, then, the treasure.

We will not achieve the consolidation of the mechanism of agricultural subsidies with crooked courts and party-convenient interpretations of a problem that has been deep and timeless”, concludes Akis Skertsos.