Following the exchange between Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nikos Androulakis over the 13th pension payment last Friday, July 10, in parliament, PASOK — through spokesman Kostas Tsoukalas — reaffirmed its programmatic commitment on the issue, as it had done on Monday, July 13. Speaking on Real FM, the opposition party’s press spokesman insisted that the funding is available to make the payment possible. “We are committed to restoring the 13th pension, a new solidarity benefit for low-income pensioners, and increasing pension replacement rates,” he reiterated. He stressed that “increasing pension replacement rates represents a real pension increase, which will simultaneously inject contributions into the insurance system, thereby boosting revenue collection.” He said that “if replacement rates rise from 50% to 60%, pulling intermediate brackets along with them, that translates into an increase that could reach as much as €100.” He further emphasized that “we are therefore talking about very significant differences in the long run, and of course a much larger contribution base today — because a self-employed person who currently opts for the lowest contribution tier, as roughly 90% do, will choose a higher tier if they know it will translate into a genuinely larger pension.”
Read also: Parliament: How Mitsotakis cornered Androulakis — the 13th pension, the “corner shops” jibe, and the dig about Tsipras’s return
Tsoukalas: “The money exists today”
When asked about the overall cost and Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s analysis in parliament, Kostas Tsoukalas accused the prime minister of “selling hot air.” He underlined that PASOK would not need to find new money if it came to power, because the funds already exist today. Specifically, he stated: “The government itself says there is €2 billion in fiscal space by year’s end. Our total intervention amounts to €1.1 billion in the first year. So the question of where we’ll find the money is already answered — the money is there today.” When asked whether PASOK would submit its programme to the General Accounting Office for costing, he responded that “the prime minister did not, in practice, dispute our figures. He simply added taxes and contributions and failed to subtract the €100 million in back payments that have nothing to do with the 13th pension. In other words, he performed a simple sleight of hand. He doesn’t actually disagree on the net cost. He’s selling hot air.”
Continuing on this point, he commented: “Second, they got caught in their own lie — because while they told us to go to the General Accounting Office, the law they themselves passed says that party programmes should be submitted to the Hellenic Fiscal Council. Do you know why they told us to go to the General Accounting Office instead? They set up an independent authority — the Hellenic Fiscal Council — but never properly staffed it, precisely so that submissions would be forced to go to the General Accounting Office, which is effectively themselves, the Ministry of Finance. In other words, they want to cook the numbers in their own kitchen.” That means, he added, “going to a New Democracy deputy minister to have our programme costed.”
Regarding “remedying the injustices” of the Katrougalos pension reform law as it applies to disability pensions, he stated: “If someone has 20 years of contributions and even 97% disability, they receive only 80% of the national pension. If the disability rate is 50% and they have 20 years, they receive 75% instead of the current 50% — that means an increase of €100 to €112 in the disability pension. These are measures that make a genuine difference.”
“We do not agree with abolishing civil servant tenure”
When asked about the strike action by public sector union ADEDY against the government’s plan to abolish permanent tenure for civil servants, Mr. Tsoukalas reiterated that “we do not agree with abolishing tenure. Tenure is not the problem, just as it isn’t considered a problem anywhere else in Europe,” adding that “a credible state and a credible public sector have nothing to do with tenure.” He argued that “abolishing tenure would essentially open a backdoor to political patronage, allowing each government to appoint whoever it wants, threaten whoever it wants, and dismiss whoever it wants. We stand for meritocracy.” On the question of misconduct in the public sector, he noted that “there are already clauses under which a civil servant found guilty of misconduct can be removed the very next morning.”
On the subject of recent opinion polls and the alleged two-way race between New Democracy and ELAS (Hellenic Left), Mr. Tsoukalas asked whether, in previous months, anyone had spoken of a two-way race between PASOK and New Democracy — pointing out that everyone had said “there is no such two-horse race, because the gap is too large, and it is the same gap that New Democracy has today over Mr. Tsipras’s party.” He stressed that “real political rivalries are decided at the ballot box and in society, and depend on whether there is a genuinely contrasting policy programme.” In this context, he noted that “on the issues of the cost of living, energy, and housing, the proposals of ELAS closely resemble those of PASOK — it is essentially a copy,” while “on private debt, they align with New Democracy, as they argue that the interests of investment funds cannot be left unprotected. We say exactly the opposite.” He went on to add: “On foreign policy, the undersea cable issue revealed that ELAS’s positions are closer to those of New Democracy — and if anything, they lean further toward concession rather than opposition. And on pensions — can ELAS come out and say it will abolish the Katrougalos law?“
