The public intervention of the president of SYRIZA, Socrates Famellos, from the podium of the Delphi Economic Forum, confirmed that a large part of the opposition is still out of touch with reality. As if they never ruled in the black four-year period 2015-2019. As if Syriza did not sign the third and heavier memorandum that will accompany for the next many years and bind future governments.
Fiscal responsibility
The insistence of S. Famellos’ insistence on talking about the distribution of surplus as if it were a fund available for political use provoked an immediate and sharp response from Kyriakos Pierrakakis, who set the record straight by clearly reminding what fiscal responsibility means.
The minister clarified once again, until it became clear to the Syriza cadres, its chairman and PASOK, that the surplus is not a product of over-performance shared at will, but the result of specific objectives agreed with the partners. He stressed that every euro that exceeds the target is assessed in the context of the overall course of the economy and cannot be turned into benefits without jeopardising the reliability of the country. He stressed that Greece cannot afford to return to practices that led to crisis and that the stability recorded today cannot be taken for granted.
So, on the one hand, we have a opposition that keeps promising, insisting on proposals that completely ignore the context in which the Greek economy operates, without telling the truth, that the country is still under increased surveillance at the level of commitments, and on the other hand, a line that insists that numbers have consequences for society and the Greek economy. Kyriakos Pierrakakis, responding directly to Famellos’ statements, spoke of policies that cost billions in the past, of choices that burdened the country and of a period when the economy was led to a dead end. It sent a clear message that the same recipes cannot be repeated with different rhetoric.
The third memorandum is a prime example. It was signed with heavy commitments for the country, with high primary surpluses for years, with strict supervision conditions, and with interventions that severely limited the degree of freedom of economic policy. That period was accompanied by closed banks, a loss of confidence and an economy that was again on the brink of collapse. Today, the same political force is attempting to present itself as the defender of society, proposing solutions that ignore the framework that it itself has shaped. This is exactly what Pierrakakis highlighted, speaking of criminal mistakes in the management of the economy, of choices that undermined the country’s course and of a perception that treated public finance as a field for political experimentation. No illusions He insisted that the country had paid dearly for these decisions and that a return to such logics was not an option. The concept of super surplus, as presented by S. Famellos, is in direct conflict with today’s reality. Any fiscal space is the result of hard balances and is assessed on the basis of commitments to partners and markets, the government says. The period of easy promises has ended painfully and this cannot be erased from the collective memory.
The Pierrakakis intervention served as a reminder that economic policy cannot return to times of illusions. A landing, however bumpy, is necessary. And this time, it came in terms that hardly leave room for misinterpretation.
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