Chr. Staikouras: The official opposition changed its position on the issue of reducing ENFIA

The Minister of Finance, Christos Staikouras, spoke about the change of attitude of the official opposition on the issue of the reduction of ENFIA, which provides for the provision of the bill on the Capital Market. Mr. Tsipras said that he would vote for it, while later Ms. Ahtsioglou said that they would vote “present”, Mr. Staikouras noted.

Today we heard from the leader of the official opposition and Mrs. Ahtsioglou, that one third of the aid goes to those who had additional tax, said Mr. Staikouras, who read a statement of the MP (2/2/2022) that the “portion of the lion “goes for the abolition of the additional tax and” today says one third “. [..] The official opposition took the additional tax that we are abolishing, but it had not noticed that we are imposing a new tax or that we are changing the discounts on the total property to the high incomes. “Because that means social justice in practice,” he said.

In fact, he described as “a top inconsistency what we saw today”: Mr. Tsipras said that he would vote for the provision for ENFIA and then we heard that you would vote “present”, said Mr. Staikouras, referring to a previous position of his Chief of Finance SYRIZA, Efi Ahtsioglou. He even quoted Mr. Tsipras from the minutes, according to which he states: “And you are talking to us about ENFIA and you are doing tricks to me here, if I will vote for it. This is nice magic! If I will vote for it! Obviously the last one. euros that will come and relieve the Greek citizen, we will vote for it. “. So, the Minister of Finance commented, in essence, on the proposal of ENFIA, Mr. Tsipras replied that he would vote for him. And two hours later, we hear that SYRIZA will not vote, (and that) it will vote “present”. With arguments that are silly, after he has been making and contradicting, for a period of four weeks, about the complementarity of the tax and not:

Earlier, when asked by the Minister of Finance to Ms. Ahtsioglou whether SYRIZA will vote or not the provision for the reduction of ENFIA, because there are, as he said, contradictory reports from the leader of the official opposition and SYRIZA MPs, Ms. Ahtsioglou said that all these days “we have set out our main objection, to the architecture of the intervention you are making, which exhausts most of the intervention in favor of higher incomes, (and which) is in our view disproportionate.” “Not that there is no alleviation of low incomes,” said Ms. Ahtsioglou and continued: From this approach, what we intend to do is, in principle, we vote against this approach, and we stated it with our position on principle. Where we will vote “present” is in the two articles that introduce the scales and discounts, and “present”, because, at the same time that some low-income citizens are favored, high-income citizens are favored many times over. When you make such a choice, and bring it into the article itself, we can not vote in favor of your approach, in favor of higher incomes, nor can we reject any help that lower incomes could have, which , indeed, due to the increase in fair values, if there was no intervention, not the one you make, they would be burdened.

Finally, he noted that Mr. Tsipras was positioned – and I have to come back, because he himself asked me to come back – for the measures to be precise. That was his position. He said that we will vote for them, because, although we disagree with their philosophy, even if one euro goes to the world, we will vote for it.

SOURCE: AMPE