ND has a 'secret agenda' for the economy and spending cuts in health, Tsipras says

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras accused rival New Democracy of having a "secret agenda in the economy and especially for public health," in an unexpected press conference on economic issues held on Friday morning.

"The time has come to reveal ND's true programme," Tsipras said in the press conference, called at the last minute on Thursday afternoon, referring to "5+1 truths" regarding the ND party's programme. He also said ND's claim that its programme had been "costed and approved" by the European Commission was "yet another shameless lie".

According to SYRIZA's leader, the fiscal plan of the previous ND government for the next three years outlines in a strict manner "the framework in which the economic policy of a government will move in the medium term" and only mentions one of the measures in ND's election campaign programme, which is a 0.3 pct reform of the public-sector wage scale.

He cited this as the first truth, noting that the medium-term programme does not mention any of the reductions in taxes and social insurance contributions promised by the party, nor its announcements relating to welfare spending and recruitments in health, education and childcare.

"Most of these measures remain uncosted and it is hard to see how ND will finance them when the fiscal space it has itself established, with its own figures in the Stability programme...is miniscule and just reaches 0.3 pct of GDP in 2026," Tsipras commented.

Tsipras' "second truth" related to spending on public-sector wages in real terms - based on the purchasing power of public-sector employees. He said that wages actually fall by 730 million euros between 2023 and 2026 as there is no provision for counteracting real income losses through inflation, noting that this was "the true ND programme".

Thirdly, he said that the Stability Programme figures for primary spending in the public sector showed spending on education, health, civil defence, citizen security remained fixed in nominal terms (11.6 billion euros) but actually declined 10 pct from 2023 until 2026.

As his "fourth truth", Tsipras referred to average employee wages, based on forecasts in ND's Stability Programme, noting that this was 12.8 pct in nominal terms "or precisely half that of ND's pre-election pledges." He accused ND of lying when it claims the average wage will reach 1,500 euros a month as the increases in real terms will not exceed 1.3 pct and fall far short of the increase in productivity.

"In other words, it is a clearcut policy of redistributing national income at the expense of wage earners," he added.

For his fifth point, Tsipras accused ND of "deliberately using inflation as a secret tax" and collecting an extra six billion euros from the amount envisaged in the 2022 and 2023 budgets through indirect taxation.

He ended by presenting "an additional great truth" concerning public health and noted that, based on the above points, it was easy to see that the statements of ND candidate Spiros Pnevmatikos "were not a mistake...but the agenda concealed by ND that he revealed."

Tsipras also referred to positions expressed by ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Parliament in 2019 about implementing "hair-raising" reforms in public health, noting that this plan had been prevented by the pandemic.

While the state of the national health system was frightful enough, Tsipras added, "the time is coming when our hair will stand on end because of [ND's] secret agenda in the healthcare sector...and ND's true positions for spending cuts in public health."

"This secret ND programme is fully in line with the reduction on primary spending envisioned in the medium-term plan. This is what is really at stake in the ballot of June 25," he said.