From Monday, commissions on people’s transactions through banks will be significantly reduced, while insurance companies have been forced to significantly reduce the increases they had announced for this year in private health insurance premiums.

Thus, for bill payments either by standing order or e-banking, commissions are zeroed out. For transfers, the maximum charge per transaction for money transfers of up to €5,000 from bank to bank is set at €0.50. Loading of prepaid cards up to €100 per day will not be subject to a commission if carried out via digital networks. Also, the commission for cash withdrawals in municipal units where there is only one bank ATM is zero.

On the issue of increases in premiums for private health plans the Ministry of Development’s regulation provides for the application of a new index by ELSTAT that will take effect in 2026. The new index will be used as the basis for the annual adjustments to life insurance policies. For 2025, insurance companies were required to halve the increases they had announced. At the same time, the Competition Commission’s investigation into the health sector is being accelerated in order to examine whether there are any circumstances in which competition rules have been violated.

These are two developments, the result of government interventions on these two fronts affecting the financial situation of hundreds of thousands of households as they faced high transaction fees and were threatened with large new increases in private health insurance premiums.

The government is also on alert on the issue of ferry tickets after companies announced 15% increases due to the European Union’s new regulatory framework to limit carbon and sulphur emissions from passenger shipping.

At a government meeting on Friday with the participation of the political leadership of the Ministry of Shipping and Insular Policy, it was decided to continuously monitor prices and exhaust the margins on the part of shipping companies in order to provide care, especially for families with children

The three-fold of the latest government moves reflects the way in which the government will continue to pursue its policy to deal with adverse developments on the critical front of price rises, which is one of the biggest problems in the daily lives of citizens. “There is no luxury of complacency,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis asserted at the last cabinet meeting, making it clear that the government’s main priority is to address the problems of everyday life. The positive course of the Greek economy and high growth rates should be combined with the improvement of the daily life of citizens, senior government officials said. For this reason, the same government officials note that the phenomena of obscenity that go against this objective should be dealt with in time before they turn into a problem for citizens.