The government will engage in a race against time during August to recover lost ground, aiming to “clear” the political landscape before the upcoming prime ministerial appearance in Thessaloniki for the 89th TIF. At the Maximos Mansion, everyone acknowledges that the government is going through a difficult period, which is readjusting its strategic planning, given that it has now entered the second half of its second term and wear is inevitable.
However, New Democracy’s percentages in recent polls are causing concern, as they are below the psychological threshold of 30%, creating conditions of intense pressure at the intra-governmental level and making it more difficult to achieve the major leap from wear that Maximos desires in the current situation.
Government: “Full speed ahead” in launching initiatives to cover lost ground
In this context, the prime minister’s associates will use the summer break as an opportunity to “accelerate” the launch of initiatives with immediate impact on citizens’ daily lives and to speed up the implementation of the 25 emblematic reforms by the end of the year, with the prime minister’s directive to his ministers being clear: “We will deliver projects we launched in 2023, we will fulfill our commitments for 2027 and we will do what we have said.”
Development ministry interventions
In this context, starting today, the government is expediting initiatives to facilitate entrepreneurship, with the simplification of licensing and further reduction of bureaucracy taking center stage in today’s Government Council for Economic Policy meeting under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This is one of the 25 priorities that form the core of government work until the end of 2025 and concerns Development Ministry interventions aimed at simplifying the business environment and reducing bureaucracy and administrative burdens by 25%, with responsible Minister Takis Theodorikakos as rapporteur.
The management of August’s open fronts will be what determines government moves until the critical milestone of TIF. In this context, managing wildfires and the evolution of phenomena in the next “hot” twenty days is of vital importance, with the goal of absolute operational capability and immediate response to phenomena making Civil Protection the biggest challenge for the rest of the summer. At the same time, the course of this year’s tourist season becomes extremely important, with estimates for tourism revenues being encouraging and the government pre-announcing new records in the “heavy industry” of the Greek economy. However, domestic tourism appears reduced due to general high prices, making August prohibitive for Greek family vacations, creating social dissatisfaction and highlighting the need for further initiatives to increase the disposable income of Greek households, with government officials referring to the upcoming TIF and prime ministerial announcements from the Vellidio stage.
Re-approaching the moderate centrist audience
At the political level, the Maximos Mansion’s targeting remains re-approaching the moderate centrist audience, which has proven to positively evaluate reforms that limit the pathologies of the Greek state. The OPEKEPE case and its handling by the government majority is estimated by pollsters to have dealt a strong blow to K. Mitsotakis’ profile, functioning cumulatively with the wear caused by handling the Tempe case and the stagnation recorded since the beginning of the second term in critical sectors of government work production.
Under this prism, the prime ministerial staff aims, with TIF as the horizon, to restore the governmental orientation toward this specific direction, utilizing all available tools so that the fiscal space resulting from the positive course of the national economy returns to citizens with the “spearhead” being the middle class. Regarding OPEKEPE anyway, the government will intensify with the return of the stolen funds the effort to combat years of mismanagement and restore trust in the subsidy system, speaking of cross-party responsibilities, structural problems and lack of substantial control since its establishment in 1998, which has led to EU fines of 2.7 billion euros to date.
Finally, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis yesterday visited the facilities of Finnish space technology company ICEYE in Athens, accompanied by the Minister of Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence, Dimitris Papastergiou. ICEYE is among the companies that have undertaken the construction and launch of SAR satellites within the framework of the National Microsatellite Program. It has signed a contract with the Hellenic Space Agency and the Ministry of Digital Governance, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, for the Greek National Satellite Space Program – Axis 1.2 (radar program)
