It is with great pleasure that I am opening the proceedings of the 82nd Thessaloniki International Fair.
I want to welcome the foreign business delegations, which this year are more numerous than ever before, a fact that confirms the international magnitude of the exhibition, the increasing role of the city of Thessaloniki in the wider region, and the strong interest of investors in our country.
I would like to start with a special reference to the honored country of this year’s event, China.
A country with a long history, with a long tradition and a culture, an ancient civilization, which is now a country with a leading role in international affairs. We have been bonded with you through sincere friendship and mutual appreciation for several decades. But especially in recent years, we have been deepening our cooperation with economic and cultural exchanges.
The Thessaloniki International Trade Fair is another great opportunity to expand this very important, strategic cooperation between our countries.
So I welcome you, and I hope that our relations will become even more substantial, more constructive and more amicable.
Dear friends,
You will allow me today, from this forum to speak not so much about yesterday, about the problems and the infinite difficulties that our country has faced in recent years.
Nor about the various political blames, political differences, the blame on previous governments, parties, let alone on individuals.
But to talk about tomorrow. For the kind of tomorrow that we want, that we deserve, and that we can have. For the great wager in front of us. For the great duty of the moment, which is but one. And I feel emboldened to say publicly it is the same for all of us, regardless of political opinion or social status:
Planning the future together. Organizing what we call the future for the many.
A great number of our people was deprived, all these years, not just of the basic elements of living, but even of the right to dream. And unfortunately this is also the case with a large part of the young people who feel suffocated in their own country. Or they feel the need to migrate and to fulfill their dreams in foreign countries.
This is something that must be over. And we have to do everything we can, to end it.
A new road is opening ahead of us.
With new challenges and perhaps new hardships.
But also with new and enormous possibilities.
It would be a way of hard work, even of struggle.
Or the path of a new growth.
Of a new social organization and freedom, at last.
For a new productive model free from the malaise of the past.
And, yes.
I think, I believe, and I want to share with you the assessment that the time has come for the youth, the country, for all of us to open our way forward.
The great question we have to answer collectively today is: With which institutions, by what measures, with which policy can we organize a Greece for tomorrow, so that the exit from the memoranda will not happen in terms of a return to the past.
Because, as you well know, the point is not to break out of the caretaker’s office, so to speak, only to make the same mistakes that have brought us there.
The point is not to promote once again the vision of phony prosperity, clientelism, corruption, and entanglement.
At this moment, our main concern must be to form the institutions, but also formulate those policies that will guarantee that Greece will not return to the past.
And the questions we have to answer are truly major.
I would like to invite you to consider this: In the past few years and I am referring to the years of growth and the first five years of the crisis, billions of euros of European funding have been wasted, I would say.
But how?
Was there a specific plan for distributing this money?
Was there any structured growth plan that choices made were actually part of that plan?
Or was it that each minister, not even every government, but each minister, uncontrolled and given to his or her whims chose the beneficiaries among his friends and favorites?
In fact, what was the strategic plan for the recruitments, made by the State, in public administration in the past years?
To none at all.
Everybody acted at will; an army of temporary contract-holders with nowhere to go, while major public sector services remained understaffed and unable to meet demands, to be in a position to serve the citizens.
Another example: The billions that were wasted for the digitization of the public sector in the past decades.
But how?
With no plan, no coordination between departments, no central monitoring.
Every man for himself.
The result: Dozens of information systems, databases, and registry records that do not communicate with each other; and now we are trying to rein in the havoc.
I could go on with more examples, to mention too many such examples.
Let me mention health supplies, constant changes in education without a strategic goal, spatial planning, smuggling, generalized tax evasion, the unregulated framework of TV and Radio broadcasting for over 30 years, the undeclared job, programs supposedly to tackle unemployment that did not offer assistance to the unemployed but to friends and acquaintances, and this list, I think, is endless.
But what I want to say with determination, from this forum, is that
we will not allow a return to a Greece like that. A Greece which was led with mathematical accuracy to the crisis.
This was Greece that went bankrupt. And now it is our duty to create a different Greece.
Greece of democracy, planning, social accountability, equality before the law, and meritocracy.
Greece of a welfare state, fair growth, stability and trust. Our duty is to form institutions through which we can protect what we call the public interest through which we can organize the debate on the next day’s strategic growth plan to be spread evenly across the whole of society.
To the many.
And our policy, if you wish, all the while, during the difficult times of the last two years, is moving through hardships and contradictions often enough, undeniably, but it is moving towards that direction.
And our actions describe better than anything the essence of our proposal, how to design, and organize, together tomorrow, all of us in tandem the future, the next day of this country.
So let me explain what is to be done.
In the beginning was the economy. The need for money, as our ancestors said.
It is a fact that no one can differ: the increased investment interest for our country. But I want to tell you that this is not a natural phenomenon.
It is not a coincidence, it is not a matter of luck..
The image of Greece has changed radically recently. And it has radically changed for the better.
The signs of recovery and of a reversal in the reluctance to invest are now visible to us and our investors, but also to our partners.
And the statements which recognize that, are coming on a daily basis.
The recent ELSTAT figures show that the country has moved at a growth rate, that is going to approach 2% for this year.
A high growth rate that we had not seen – of equal height – for over nine years.
Positive growth rates are an extraordinary sign, if it is taken also into account that they come after years of unprecedented fiscal consolidation.
For two consecutive years, however, we have managed to overshoot the program’s primary surplus targets.
This has significantly strengthened our negotiating position. And it creates tangible prerequisites for the possibility, and the financially necessary space in the medium term, to alleviate the weights that depress the Greek society.
The roadmap for debt relief and debt sustainability also offers the certainty that we are now in a position, with steady steps, to finally escape from the custody regime and from the destructive austerity.
Few if any are those who do not understand, among those who are in this chamber and those who are listening, how great, revolutionary I dare say, implications such a development will have for the country, after seven years of tough fiscal consolidation and strict guardianship.
And the first successful exit to the markets last July is already shifting hopes to the certainty that this may happen on time, as it is specified at one year from today.
As well as, our successive upgrades in our credit rating, the decline in bond spreads and the upgrading of economic confidence indicators, are now reaching the highest levels in recent years. I do not want to tire you with numbers and figures. Unfortunately, however, I cannot completely avoid it, especially in such a speech.
Because even if I wanted to talk to you just about how to organize the future, I must tell you that I cannot describe this to you without first attempting to record using these figures for both our today and our tomorrow, especially when we talk about the economy.
The figures, therefore, say that exports in the first half of 2017 increased by 18% and that they represent the highest performance since 2001.
Something that already indicates a gradual transition to a more outward-looking, more productive model.
The general industrial production index recorded an increase of 6% in the first half of 2017, while manufacturing activity registered in July and August the highest growth rate since 2008.
Foreign direct investment in 2016 was at a high for the decade, and further improvement is expected in 2017, as we already had an inflow of 1.4 billion Euros in the Greek economy in the first four months, i.e. before the second review was completed.
Of course, everybody understands, if they truly wish to understand that the recovery of confidence in the Greek economy and the revival of investment interest is a consequence of the recovery of the country’s credibility and international alliances. Of having recovered the geopolitical potential and status of the country.
The recent visit by President Macron, the visit by President Obama, by Russian President Putin, and of course my two visits as Prime Minister in China, prove that the country is being upgraded and becoming again a strategic partner of the most important economic powers on the planet. Yesterday afternoon, after the departure of the French President, at the airport where I went to bid him goodbye, turning to the VIP room I met a number of French businessmen, and some of their numerous delegations accompanying the French President. One of them came up to me and said “you know, Prime Minister, today, with the French President you have achieved something very important”. I asked him what that was. He replied, “You have succeeded, in the conscience of the French and I believe in all of Europe, to turn the key characteristic that Greece was identified by in recent years. You have converted Grexit into to Grinvest.” That is, the initials of the name Greece, GR, do not come before the word exit any more, but before the word investment. Investments in Greece.
I found this observation very important and very interesting. That’s why I wanted to share it with you.
The transition, however, from Grexit’s time to Grinvest’s era, did not take place on an autopilot:
It is done with planned and structured initiatives towards growth.
I quote, therefore, some of them:
Under the Development Law, the completion of the evaluation of 800 new investment projects worth of 2 billion Euros. Unlike what was happening in the past, these investments are mainly concerned with agriculture and food sector, industry and manufacturing.
They relate, in particular, to the support of productive activities in the secondary sector.
And for the first time, a new law is geared to strengthening small and medium-sized enterprises.
Because it is the small and medium-sized companies the ones that have been mostly affected by the crisis over the years.
In the area of Public Private Partnerships, 12 works contracts were signed, totaling 635 million Euros.
While in the digital economy, the development of a fiber optic network, with investments of over € 500 million, will have multiplier benefits for citizens and businesses, acting as a growth accelerator. In order to improve the business climate – while being accused of being enemies of entrepreneurship – we designed and implemented very specific interventions:
Firstly, we have simplified licensing, and this already covers about 30% of business activity, especially in manufacturing, tourism and health. Note that more than 11,000 businesses have already benefited from this new licensing system. The rate is expected to reach 53% of business activity soon, expanding in the logistics and mining sectors.
Secondly, with an important bill of the Ministry of Economy and Development, mechanisms for market surveillance and control are being reformed.
The aim is to adopt the best European practices, and a common methodology for all audit authorities.
And thirdly, with the Integrated Information System everything is done digitally: Licensing, recording of control, overall market surveillance.
Therefore, you see, that climate change and the strengthening of trust is not a random event, a natural phenomenon. It has to do with planned institutional interventions. By setting up mechanisms for organizing the administration. It has to do with the creation, I would say, of another model of production and implementation of public policies.
Similarly, to maximize the use of financial instruments and to create new ones, it is also important to boost business activity. Greece, for the third consecutive year, is the first country in the absorption of NSRF funds.
This means an inflow of € 11 billion to the Greek economy from 2015 onwards in the sectors of energy, transport, business innovation and human resource development.
The state-funded part of the Public Investment Program has increased for the second consecutive year by 25% and has reached 1 billion Euros.
While the medium-term agreement with our creditors foresees an increase of 1.5 billion euros by 2020 for agricultural infrastructure and energy saving schemes for buildings. With the European Investment Bank, we have signed the largest 5-year agreements that will bring an additional 2 billion Euros of liquidity in 2017. While at the same time we are preparing projects worth 7 billion euros with the European Investment Bank (EIB) for the next three years. Already with the use of the agreements with the EBRD and the Juncker project, € 2 billion have been channeled into small and medium-sized enterprises. While new, targeted, leveraged financing tools are being mobilized to in turn set in motion multiple resources worth 3 billion Euros. For example, the Entrepreneurship Fund 2, Equifund, the new Home Savings Program, the Infrastructure Fund and the Microfinance Fund.
Especially for microcredit, allow me to say, that the Government is preparing, after a relevant research, what I believe will be ready to put to vote by the end of the year, i.e. the appropriate legislative plan for micro-credit to self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises.
As has been the case for many years in Europe, for the first time in Greece, we are moving forward and creating the institutional framework to ensure funding for the support of 100,000 micro-enterprises.
They will have easy access to small credit, up to 15,000, to get started in their first steps or to improve their business.
By the same token, we are working, even intensively working, on the creation of a Development Bank, a tool that the Greek economy needs, in close cooperation with the French Development Bank and other European development banks, to contribute financially thus creating a flow of liquidity for small and medium-sized enterprises.
In addition, of course, to our own actions, by designing and introducing new financing tools, a prerequisite for boosting liquidity is that the banking system and the systemic banks will be able to regain their role in the real economy.
And here we have made important interventions with the completion of the institutional framework for the management of the non-performing loans and the introduction of a modern mechanism for the out-of-court settlement that has already begun to bear fruit.
The Greek banks with the capital adequacy that now have, they owe and are able to play their role as a key mechanism for providing liquidity, but without repeating the excesses of the past.
A complete change of example is also applied in the design and implementation of public infrastructure projects.
In just two years we managed to complete the main roads that previously had been left to their own fate for decades at enormous cost to the Greek public.
I do not have to say a lot here in Thessaloniki about that. Words are unnecessary. I think the works speak for themselves instead. Those who have come to the city using the new road found that out for themselves. While, allow me the expression, perhaps the biggest joke for many years in the city, the metro of Thessaloniki, is finally moving forward and not only progressing, but also ending, because we will soon be able to offer it for use. In 2019 the first trains will be introduced, in 2020 it will be given to the citizens of Thessaloniki.
But we do not stop here.
We are upgrading the ports of Northern Greece. Thessaloniki, Kavala, Alexandroupolis, making the country a transit hub for the wider region and an entry gate for the whole of Europe.
At the same time, a vital factor of optimism and robustness is one of the main pillars of the economy, tourism, which is moving at a rate of growth of 7% per year, twice the average of global tourism, which is 3-4%. And it contributes 20% to GDP and around 1 million jobs, directly and indirectly.
These high growth rates have undoubtedly raised business interest and led to a real “boom” of business activity in the tourism industry.
And if you wish, here’s the big bet for the future.
How do we organize public policy in tourism to strengthen the prospects, improve the services we give to tourists and strengthen the relationship between tourism businesses and the primary sector of production. This is the big wager for the next day of the country.
How can we make touristic packages more attractive, while taking advantage of other possibilities and other comparative advantages of the country. The quality of agricultural products, which have to be processed here and get a Designation of Origin. While, of course, hotels can use them without being forced to buy low-quality inputs.
However, as I spoke about the primary sector, we follow and we have to follow a different model. A different model of organization and design.
Our goal is to strengthen cooperative collective effort, producer groups, entrepreneurship and extroversion.
In 2016, exports of agricultural products amounted to 24% of total exports, while in 2014 this figure was 19%.
And this happened despite the Russian restrictions and the embargo.
The new Rural Development Program (RDP) 2014-2020, the main development tool, has been revised and now includes Community and national resources of around € 6 billion.
In just 18 months of its approval, more than 3 billion public spending have been committed to notices and ongoing projects.
While it is our concern in the next period το deal with the scourge of naturalization with a special law that we will bring to Parliament, as well as the ultimately inefficient tax on wine that has created much more problems than it is supposed to solve.
At this point, allow me to refer to a flagship initiative:
The development of the Social Economy.
The new law that was passed in October 2016 opened the field, beyond what was known until today, it set the rules and created the environment so that the Social Economy is not only addressed to vulnerable groups but to all citizens and all productive activities.
Within just 6 months, 206 new Social Cooperative and Employee Cooperatives were set up.
In October, the Social Economy Fund is launched, with an initial capital of 25 million Euros, for companies with no access to bank lending, with financial products (micro loans, larger loan guarantees, letters of guarantee).
By the end of the year, 100 Centers for Information and Support of Social Cooperatives will have been set up throughout the country.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to visit the city of Athens, in Psyrri, the “Impact Hub”, and see for myself the serious work that is mostly done by young people in the field of social entrepreneurship.
I want to tell you that our goal is to create young entrepreneurial creativity cells in the future in every city in every corner of Greece.
In the public sector, we are also undertaking significant reforms. Reforms that no one dared in recent years. Our main focus is also on shaping new institutions.
Organizing procedures and control mechanisms that will guarantee the protection and service of the public interest.
Our strategic goal is a public in which all citizens will have equal access.
A public helper in the great effort of recovery and the new productive model we want to build. The new meritocratic system of supervisors, the establishment of the executive staff registry, the unified mobility system, are key areas that we have promoted and progress in the next few years.
Our vision is the ‘digital public sector 2020’.
Citizen’s transactions with public services are completed electronically, via a mobile or a computer. And believe me if we accomplish that and we will work hard to do so, this will be the biggest step in modernizing the country.
However, we have also pushed forward reforms in the tax system. I am talking about electronic transactions, measures to combat smuggling of tobacco and fuel, the coordination with a single center of public procurement systems, and control spending on the medicine market, improved public procurement systems, e-invoicing in the final processing, voluntary tax evasion of tax evasion in the past, and, of course, tax audits on foreign depositors’ lists.
With these measures, and with cost savings, we achieve our fiscal targets while also creating space for the necessary tax deduction.
We all know how heavy businesses and individuals are today.
At the same time, however, we give a strong signal to the forces of inertia that maintained the black hole of the illicit economy and tax evasion.
The confrontation with the scourge of entanglement, the procurement for the TV broadcasting licenses, which in the days to come will be over in spite of what many say, it will be completed through the ESR, the blows to the partisan impudence that had imposed some great interests, the check on the various gold lists, and the imposition of the corresponding sanctions, certify our will, not to reject a fundamental principle of the rule of law: So that all will be rewarded according to to their contribution, and contribute according to their reward.
But I want you to allow me to return now to the basic question that affects us, which concerns our government, and I imagine it concerns all Greeks:
Growth therefore, growth is welcome, we welcome it. But for whom?
Because we had achieved growth during the past, even though we were running very fast off the cliff. This I believe is the crucial, the main question we have to answer. Because if growth is just in numbers, or a growth from which few will profit and not growth for the many, if possible for all I would say, then I will say it clearly:
This, for me, for us, as for the great majority of our people, is far from being genuine.
If we produce ten tunics, Your Reverence, you know a bit about allegories, I think you will agree, it is neither economically efficient nor socially functional, or morally fair, to have nine of them be enjoyed by the few while one is worn through the cold by the many.
This is something that must end in our homeland. It’s something that’s over, and will be over.
And we are doing our best to ensure in practice this right, especially for young people, to be able to have an equal share of growth, i.e. the benefits the country will have from high growth rates in the years to come.
Because only fair growth, which drives the many not only into the right of work, but also to other rights and benefits, can be a stable, grounded, prosperous and beneficial development for all social groups.
That is why we try to make the skewers, the steps, the momentum of the economy, today, and even more so tomorrow, to give energy and momentum to organized waves of social solidarity and justice.
First and foremost by reducing unemployment. This wound, which bleeds mainly for young people, must be healed. Unemployment in 2014 was 27%. Today, based on official data, it has fallen to 21.2%. In the last few years, from 2015 onwards, as long as we are in charge, it drops almost 2 per cent per year, while until 2015 it rose 1.5 per cent per year.
But I’m not going to say before you that the picture is one to be happy with.
While so many qualified and competent people remain excluded from the basic human right, the right to work, neither society, nor democracy, nor the present government can feel vindicated.
However, it is important for the results of this effort that from January 2015 to December 2016, 213,000 new jobs have been created. And this year, up to July, 263,000 new jobs were created. This is a record number over the past 16 years, not just a record in the years of the crisis.
And youth unemployment fell by 10 percentage points compared to 2014.
While it is particularly important is the declining in full-time employment is now reversed, in the new jobs that are created. But it is not just the fight against unemployment.
Our effort is spread over many fronts:
One of these was to ensure universal and equal healthcare for citizens regardless of job status, insurance and income. With the law on healthcare for uninsured people, about one and a half million fellow citizens have hospitalized for free in public hospitals.
It was fair and it was done!
With the out-of-court settlement, the perverse link between the over-indebtedness of small and medium-sized and small businesses to banks and the public is finally being solved.
It was fair and it was done!
While corresponding intervention is also imminent for the liabilities of the companies to the insurance funds.
We managed, despite strong pressure, to ensure the protection of the First Residence.
By extending the implementation of the Katseli law and the new regulation that is coming and will extend its validity beyond the end of this year.
It is fair and has become an act!
The embarrassing regulation imposed on the public debt, and the possibility of prosecution for debts up to 100,000 Euros, was abolished.
It was fair and it was done!
The outperformance of 2016 was used, with an one-off bonus – to about 1.6 million low-paid pensioners, despite the very strong reactions of that time.
It was fair and it was done!
Over the past 2.5 years, the Ministry of Labor and the Manpower Employment Organization supported a total of 220,000 unemployed people with their programs.
It was fair and it was done!
For our fellow citizens who were hit harder by the financial crisis, we tried to create a safety net. Since the beginning of 2017, Social Solidarity Income has been implemented, with a total budget of 760 million euro, for 700,000 beneficiaries.
It was fair and we did it!
School meals become an institution of the Greek school. Starting this year, 120,000 elementary school students will have a hot meal each day, especially in low-income areas.
And in 2019, half the children of all the elementary and high schools in the country will be fed free of charge. Since October, after a number of difficulties have been overcome, they will be implemented in about 70% of Thessaloniki primary schools.
It is just and it is done!
I am now coming to the crucial field of Health.
And in the flagship reform of the Primary Care System,
The bill passed in August provides for the creation of 239 Local Health Units in 65 urban areas in the country.
At the same time we are giving a big fight to cover the huge staff gaps we found in the NHS.
Since 2015, more than 9,000 doctors, nursing and other paramedical and administrative staff have been added to the NHS.
The 2,500 are permanent staff.
While staffing procedures with an additional 9,500 people are occurring for the upcoming period.
In the field of Education, we introduce profound incisions towards reactive and anachronistic perceptions of the established status quo.
With the 2017 budget, for the first time in many years, public spending on education has increased.
The schools, for the first time last year, opened without any problems, and so will be the case this year. Perhaps we can stop saying that things that should happen normally should not be of concern and mention, but all the past years, unfortunately, they have not been done properly.
But the major reform will be the radical upgrading of the role of the Secondary Education Institution, and the way of the access to higher education.
The class hours in the second and third grade of the High School are radically decreasing and the hours of teaching at school, the lessons that the student will be tested, increase.
So that our schools stop being a mere guardian of the tutorials, stop the students from going to the 3rd grade of High School and wait for the time to go to the tutorial and re-acquire the educational content.
Through the Higher education law arbitrariness and misconduct are hampered that a strengthened neo-liberal inspirational institutional status used to produce.
While for the first time it is possible for students who meet the academic criteria for admission to postgraduate programs but who are unable to pay tuition fees, to have access to those programs tuition-free.
In all aspects of our policy, dear friends, we leave a strong social mark in our interventions. Even in the Ministry we founded, that had to be founded many years ago, that of Digital Policy, our interventions have a strong social footprint.
410,000 Greeks get free satellite access to Greek channels in all parts of the country, because some areas were left behind without a digital signal and no one showed any interest in these people.
At the same time, 14,500 households in our 47 islands and 72,000 first-year students acquire high-speed Internet, either free of charge or with substantial subsidies.
And already, similar benefits are planned for other sensitive social groups, such as People with Disabilities.
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends,
I have already said certain things about unemployment. I would like to come back to some more targeted points, because, I confess, this issue is the one that hurts us all.
So we give and we will continue to give it as much as we have at our disposal.
The main road to tackling unemployment, no doubt, is the stimulation of growth and the exploitation of the positive momentum of the Greek economy, the improvement of the business climate, the investments, in order to have jobs in the country.
But with a certain planning, we move forward and we organize. For example, in the field of youth and new entrepreneurship.
With a working clause in all NSRF programs to preserve existing and create new jobs.
Covering insurance and wage costs to create new jobs from all co-funded projects.
In addition, to address unemployment, we are implementing Guaranteed Employment Plans in the wider public sector, especially in TABs.
From the beginning of the year to September, about 75,000 beneficiaries will have joined these programs.
Overall, by the end of the year, they will have covered 120,000 unemployed people.
Also, the duration of the public benefit programs has been extended from 5 to 8 months in order to allow the employee after the end of the program, to be eligible for unemployment benefit if they have not been able to access the labor market.
And the employees’ rights to Welfare Work are now safeguarded.
But the basic direction of our government is not just the creation of new jobs, but the intervention in the labor relations themselves, for the benefit of the labor forces.
This is a difficult task, we know, given that the control mechanisms have been weakened in the past, while the phenomena of illegality are extensive.
To respond, we work in three ways:
First pillar, legislative interventions to protect workers.
With the law by the Ministry of Labor which was voted a few days ago, the phenomena of undeclared, under-declared or unpaid work are resolutely and vertically addressed.
Arrangements are being made against any form of employer arbitrariness and established abusive practices. This creates the conditions for an overall improvement in the labor market.
The second pillar is the strengthening of control mechanisms.
The Labor Inspectorate (ASEP) is substantially upgraded and empowered with human resources, new IT systems, and financial tools.
Finally, a third pillar, is the reorientation of financial tools to support workers and to improve labor relations:
Within a few days, a large subsidy scheme for social security contributions will be in place for those employers who choose to turn their employees into ones with a receipt of services rendered. The program has a total budget of € 156 million and will benefit more than 40,000 workers. Particularly young workers.
In the immediate future, a program will be implemented to help workers who are either unpaid for a long period of time, or are in a labor withholding status, or are employed in declining industries.
The program has a total budget of € 100 million and will benefit more than 50,000 workers.
Finally, I would like to refer to a specific sector of our policy, which is about supporting the new generation and in particular halting the phenomenon of brain drain and referring to the “I remain in Greece, I come back to Greece” initiative for making the most out of the scientific potential in the country, is a practical effort to reverse the phenomenon.
A list of research entrepreneurs from abroad is being prepared and they are being informed about possible opportunities in Greece, aiming to create business networks.
Also, € 330 million through NSRF is being used on scholarships for doctoral students, underprivileged and postdoctoral researchers, for the creation of research teams.
At the same time, the Operational Program «Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship» selects innovative young graduates of higher education and finances them up to 100%.
Funding the business partnership with research institutions to promote investment in research and innovation with € 280 million through the “research-create-innovation” flagship program.
These are all actions that were designed and implemented with great effort, design and perseverance, and this time was realized. However, I would like to mention one more that we are expected to announce in the upcoming period, and it concerns job programs for new entrants to the labor market and laid-off young people aged 18-29.
Another initiative is to be announced in the coming period and I would like to mention it here in Thessaloniki, as I close my remarks on the fight against unemployment. It is the grant of the first recruitment of an employee by individual, corporate or cooperative enterprises. And it will benefit young people up to 34 years of age.
The economic incentive is the subsidy for 12 months of a significant part of the recruited and non-salary costs of the newly recruited for full-time employment.
Dear friends,
Our fight against unemployment, marks our overall struggle to re-launch the economy, and it is certain that the country will come out of the crisis, not only when it will achieve positive growth rates, not only when it will succeed to return to normality, but when it has succeeded and we have managed to approach the pace and size of employment in other EU countries, the other euro zone countries. This is the key goal, that is the great effort. To regain work in the country.
I want to say the following before I close:
I wish before I close to refer to Thessaloniki. Usually in the TIF, the Prime Ministers were quoted almost by rote regarding Northern Greece and its problems and sometimes giving some promises. Sometimes saying a good word, talking about the co-capital city of Thessaloniki, which in reality was everything but a co-capital.
Last year, during my meeting with the producers’ representatives of Northern Greece, not here but at the Maximos Mansion, I had told them that I did not want to follow the same old path.
I had made the commitment that my interest in Thessaloniki and Northern Greece was not to be limited to etiquette visits just before the TIF.
But to translate into a real effort to upgrade both the city and the wider region.
And I made that commitment there with the establishment of a Prime Minister’s Office in Thessaloniki.
And I kept this commitment.
All this time, we have shown that our care for Thessaloniki and Northern Greece is not communicative, but it is real. This year there has been a lot here in Thessaloniki and much more can be done in the coming years. My presence here in the city will be intensified, it will be continuous, not only to meet with institutions, but even foreign leaders as I have already done twice, and of course eventually, there will be very important initiatives, very important projects that we envision here and a for long time.
I have already told you about the Metro and the trains that will be brought into operation in 2019.
I cannot help mentioning the OASTH that has already passed in a new era with its de-privatization and finally ends its scandalous history. And of course, OASTH will also be judged by cleaning the swamp, so to speak, but we will also be judged by its effectiveness towards the citizen, by how much this Organization can meet the needs of the average Thessaloniki.
I cannot help but mention the investment in Thessaloniki Port that has been completed, creating wider development opportunities for the city, for Northern Greece, an investment with a special French flavor, that we also mentioned in yesterday’s meeting with President Macron.
The great progress in the PATHE railway and of course the Egnatia railway that we agreed in Kavala with my Bulgarian counterpart and will connect Thessaloniki with the Black Sea and the Danube. We want Thessaloniki to really be the focal point, not of Northern Greece, but the focal point of the Balkans. The center of inter-Balkan cooperation. This is our vision for Thessaloniki. A civilization city that has the culture, has the tradition and that can play a very important role.
But it was not just them.
The return of Pier 1 of the port to the people of the city.
The concession of the former military camp of Pavlos Melas, to the municipality of Pavlos Melas and to the local community. Just as with the concession of the Kodra camp.
In this way, dear friends, we create a new understanding of the use of the public space by those to whom it belongs. Because the public space belongs first and foremost to the citizens. To the people of Thessaloniki.
We have many more things to come.
The project for the freight center of Thessaloniki, the new school buildings in western Thessaloniki, the works for integrated waste management, the redevelopment of the International Exhibition site, which was mentioned in the speech and the President of the Exhibition and many more.
I think that the interest in Northern Greece is proved by actions and these are the acts that can be upgraded, not in good words, but in practice, the role of Thessaloniki in a real co-capital of the country.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I tried today to describe how we understand and how hard we work to organize now the next day, our future of our country.
I have tried to remind you of the first steps, the important successes that have already been achieved in areas that have been difficult, gray, impassable for many years.
You know well that they were attempted not only by us but by hundreds of thousands of citizens, workers in the public and private sector, entrepreneurs, scientists, young people, people who honor and cherish their work and care about their neighbor and their homeland.
I want to close by saying this to you:
In a year from now, good health provided, I hope to see you all and everyone here again–we will all be here again.
At the inauguration of the 83rd TIF.
But there will be a huge difference from all the previous years.
The country, after eight entire years, will be launching the first TIF without memoranda and out of the over-sight regime.
This is our goal. This is our plan. And we will succeed.
And we are determined to make it happen, we are determined to bring this country back to its own feet, to its own strengths. And we will do what is required and necessary to make this vision happen. And we can discuss and debate here next year, to share thoughts and even disagree, because we do not all have the same view of how this country should stand on its feet, how we should organize the future. However, the primary objective and condition is to achieve that.
Dear friends,
I am sure we will succeed. This time next year we will be discussing how to organize the future and how to design and implement a Greece for the new era.
That’s how it has to be done. And so it will be done.
Be well. Be strong.
Thank you very much.
