SYRIZA casts shadows over the management of the Recovery Fund – He links it to burning premature

By Niki Zorba

SYRIZA and the management of the Recovery Fund: A multi-month long story with spikes towards the government to accept cross-party parliamentary control over the management of its funds.

The first time that Alexis Tsipras formulated a proposal – unofficially – for a parliamentary cross-party observatory in the utilization of the Fund’s resources, was in May 2021, at an event where the “alternative strategy” and the proposals of SYRIZA for the Fund’s funds were presented .

Officially, the proposal was submitted much later. Last March, when the president of SYRIZA applied the formation of a parliamentary committee by the president of the Parliament, Kostas Tasoula, through his letter.

Yesterday, the leadership of Koumoundourou announced that its request for the inter-party “observatory” on the utilization of the funds was rejected, with Mr. Tsipras directly linking the refusal of the ruling party to the “burning” of the early elections :

“On 3/15, I proposed the establishment of a Control Committee for the allocation of the Recovery Fund resources. Four months later, they rejected it and formally. It is a lot of money to give us an account… This is why the Prime Minister does not hold early elections even though he knows that in the spring there is a risk with a crash”, is the characteristic post of chief officer opposition on twitter.

The president of the Parliament is also in the “frame”.

With her announcement earlier, Koumoundourou had prepared the ground for Alexis Tsipras’s attack on the Government, including the Speaker of the Parliament, implying intrusive tactics and methods:

“After Mr. Tasoulas delayed for four months to bring to the Parliament the proposal of the President of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, Alexis Tsipras, for the establishment of a parliamentary consultation and accountability committee for the 2021-2027 Recovery Fund and NSRF funds, finally the ND decided to reject it”, said the relevant announcement of SYRIZA with the conclusion:

1. “Obviously they had taken this decision from the first moment when the specific proposal was submitted. However, the study of Mr. Tasoula to bring it at the end of July in secret shows that the Mitsotakis government is doing everything possible to pass the stand for which there are not many arguments to support.

2. The parties of the progressive space to support the proposal of Alexis Tsipras, based on article 118 of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament, to amend the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament by adding a relevant provision to article 44 which will provide for the establishment of a “Parliamentary Consultation and Accountability Committee for the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and for the NSRF 2021-2027”.

By the way, PASOK said yes, albeit with reservations to the SYRIZA proposal, while the party of G. Varoufakis said “no”.

Ahtsioglou: Low absorbency

SYRIZA’s Finance Department head, Efi Ahtsioglou, also referred to the issue in her extensive statement, who attributed the government’s refusal, among other things, to its performance regarding the absorption of funds.

According to her:

– In 2021 the absorption was only 306 million euros, while initially the government predicted 2.6 billion and then reduced it to 1.6 billion, finally remaining dramatically far from even its reduced planning.

– In 2022, the absorption until June – without the money having yet reached the real economy – is 899 million, i.e. 28% of the 3.2 billion predicted by the government.

– In total the absorption for 2021 and the first half of 2022 is not even half of what the government initially predicted for 2021 alone.

– The quality of the projects it seeks to finance. So far they concern imported products and older projects, while what will follow, along the lines of the Pissarides report, will exclude small and medium enterprises in favor of a few large enterprises.