Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made his customary Sunday Facebook post. The prime minister stands by the tense atmosphere.

PM Mitsotakis expressed,

Have a good day! Three days, but I hope you are tuned in to our appointment. Another “busy” seven days has come to a close, with many government interventions in different areas. But before I report on all of them, I would like to start with a topic of particular importance: the case of the Monastery of St. Catherine of Mount Sinai, following the decision of the Court of Appeal of Ismailia. Our position is clear and identical to that of the historic monastery, namely that the long-standing tradition and the already established status quo of the operation of this emblematic Greek Orthodox landmark should be respected. The explicit assurance of the Egyptian government for the continued operation of the Monastery under the existing status quo, following the position of President Sisi, shows the will of Cairo to deal with the case in a positive way. The meeting between the Greek Foreign Minister and his Egyptian counterpart a few days ago, where it was agreed that the two sides would work towards securing the rights of the Monastery, its legal form and personality, was also in the same spirit. Our goal is to resolve the issue fairly and definitively and to continue the strategic cooperation between the two countries.

Let me now turn to my review of the week’s government interventions, and I’ll start with questions of legality. As you will well know, 15 months ago we introduced a tougher framework for dealing with violence at sports grounds: mandatory cameras, digital fan ID entry control at stadiums, limiting sports clubs to one per team and automated administrative sanctions for any misconduct. Measures that worked. What we have achieved collectively over the last year will not be allowed to go to waste. The State must safeguard the smooth and safe conduct of sporting events. For us, it goes without saying that the law must be applied in every case of infringement on and off the field. We expect the owners and managers of the teams to behave in the same spirit by example, as do all basketball players, and of course, the fans. We all recognize that tension is an integral part of a competitive sport and a championship, such as Greek basketball. It is the responsibility and obligation of all of us, without exception, to protect the joy and competitiveness of basketball by eliminating any illegal action from the playing fields. Therefore, the best shall win, leaving our bad selves out of the courts and finally behind us.

Our Universities cannot become a field of violence and lawlessness either. The law must be enforced and that is a non-negotiable requirement for everyone – students and faculty alike – to feel safe at their schools. In 2019, we restored a true academic sanctuary. And I say true because the peculiar regime of lawlessness that prevailed during the post-independence period had nothing to do with the free movement of ideas. The notion that supposedly “nothing has changed” is not valid and does not do justice to the effort we have made. I would remind you that 48 occupations of premises have been evacuated and at least 500 people have been arrested who had turned the institutions either into hooded hiding places or into a sanctuary for offences under common criminal law. In many cases, the rectorate authorities have helped to establish legality. Elsewhere, the measures have worked; elsewhere, there have been gaps and a lack of responsiveness on the part of both the government and the judicial and police authorities, as well as the university administrations. We are now coming to strengthen the already bold legislative framework with a further 11 interventions that we believe will more effectively shield universities against violence. To name a few: a student who is prosecuted will automatically lose his or her student status for up to 24 months within 10 days without delays and unnecessary administrative red tape. A deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court will supervise university violence offences nationwide. Control of access to university facilities will be strengthened, along the lines of schools abroad, and sanctions up to and including removal from their role will be provided for those rectors and administrations that fail to meet their obligations. I was pleased to hear the Rectors at our meeting the other day welcome our decision to protect the public university even more emphatically. No planning can be effective if it does not also start by establishing a culture of prevention and zero tolerance by all.

Said and done. The reason for the “Marietta Giannakou” programme. With the end of the school year, so practically in a few days, the crews will start work in 426 schools in 245 municipalities of the country. This is the first time that such extensive renovations and improvements to the infrastructure of public schools have been carried out. The selection of schools was based on specific criteria, giving priority to special schools proposed by the municipalities, to schools in border, island and frontier areas and in areas recently affected by natural disasters. This is a project worth a total of €100 million, which comes from the donation of the Hellenic Union of Banks, while every year an additional €50 million will be added from national funds in order to increase the number of schools that are renovated and acquire modern and accessible infrastructures.

With a “click”, every citizen can now see all the programmes relating to the acquisition, renovation, repair or upgrading of a home and identify which subsidies, tax relief or facilities correspond to their profile, whether they are an owner or a tenant. All this on stegasi.gov.gr, where there is detailed information on all 43 actions implemented by the government on housing, with a total budget of 6.5 billion euros. Even more useful: the platform calculates the amount that each person can save if they join any programme that fits their profile, while the user, for their part, can set various parameters to adapt the programme’s benefits to their needs. If the visitor of the digital portal wishes to do so, he/she can immediately start applying for participation.

I now change the subject and go to one of the most misunderstood concepts in our country, the evaluation of public services, institutions and officials. Intentionally or not, it is vilified as punishment, when in fact it is a tool for improvement, both for the services and the people who staff them. For the first time in Greece, in addition to the substantial internal evaluation to which I will refer below, citizens were asked to give their opinion through the axiologisi.ypes.gov.gr platform on specific structures per category of services of the central state and local government agencies. Within two weeks, 65,000 citizens, women and men of all ages, participated in the largest ever poll of this kind. The results are very interesting – you can see them for yourself on the website I mentioned earlier. It is now our responsibility to turn these results into actions that will improve public services, but it is also the responsibility of the mayors to take very seriously what the citizens have told us and what they propose to improve their daily lives. See you in six months when we will have the next evaluation from the people.

Let’s move on to the internal evaluation of civil servants for 2024, where the results are extremely interesting. 172,474 employees participated – 8,808 more than in 2019 – including 22,725 supervisors, the highest number over time. And while previously 9 out of 10 employees and supervisors were judged to be high performing, excellent and competent, now, having been assessed against 186,836 objectives, the picture is completely different. Real, I would say. What do I mean? Only 15,615, less than 1 in 10, were rated as high performing employees, while under the haters, -4 in 10 supervisors were judged excellent and very adequate. Two other figures worth mentioning: the number of training courses almost quadrupled and a total of EUR 29.1 million in bonuses were given to those who reached the targets. To really change the civil service, measurement, evaluation and consistency are needed. Only then will it stop working for itself and start working for citizens and society.

I will continue with the good news from Brussels. The Commission’s six-monthly report clearly acknowledges the positive performance of the Greek economy with high primary surpluses, growth twice that of the Eurozone with debt serviceability, which is rapidly declining. Of particular importance is the approval we received for the activation of the escape clause for defence spending, which creates a fiscal space of €500 million for 2026, which will be allocated to development and social purposes. The Commission also accepted the Greek request to take 2024 as the base year for calculating defence spending as a percentage of GDP, instead of 2021, which will apply to all other member states. For our country and for us, defence is a national issue and an absolute priority.

We continue to invest in the future. And this is not a slogan, it is a practice. Accelerating strategic investments in critical sectors is key to the productive transformation of our country. In this direction, the Ministry of Development and the Inter-ministerial Committee for Strategic Investments have approved 4 new investments, with a budget of 780 million euros, in the sectors of energy, networks, innovation and tourism. These are the construction of a CO₂ capture unit at the TITAN plant in Kamari, Boeotia; the development of a fibre optic broadband network by United Fiber to cover at least 1.6 million households in the territory by 2027; the HERMES project by Intracom Telecom to develop an integrated wireless network with applications in rural and suburban areas; and the creation of a multi-thematic tourist complex in the municipality of Preveza. With the new development law that we have passed, over the next two years, more than €1 billion will be made available to all Greek entrepreneurship, aiming at sustainable growth, strengthening competitiveness, and creating even more and better-paid jobs.

So that’s it! Some news we liked more, some a little less, but all of them are worth knowing. To know where we are and where we want to go. Thank you for your time in this review as well. Good morning!