Opinion
By Notis Papadopoulos
In 1984, with Margaret Thatcher as British prime minister, a newly elected Tory MP, Matthew Parris, conducted a Thatcherite-inspired experiment. As part of a “World in Action” documentary, he tried to live for a week on the official unemployment benefit, which at the time was £26.80. The Iron Lady believed that living on the dole would cover the most basic needs of an unemployed person in order to motivate him to constantly look for work. Of course, the Conservative MP failed miserably, since on the morning of the fifth day he had less than a pound left – not even enough to pay for the electricity and heating for the last two days of the experiment. It was a resounding public relations flop for Thatcher. However, the incident still did not lead to an increase in the meager unemployment benefit.
I remembered the Parris experiment – which I followed with great political interest as a student in the UK – while listening now to New Democracy ministers recently celebrating and bragging about the “big increases” that some tax breaks voted on by the government brought to salaries in 2026. Increases, however, that for the majority of employees are very small and in any case do not really boost their income, except for some families with three children or more where the difference is significant. For example, the increase for a salaried employee of €2,000 per month with three children is about €150 per month – that is, they gain one extra salary per year.
However, the picture is very different for the vast majority (60%) of private and public sector employees who live on a monthly income of up to €1,000 net. As recorded in the Ergani information system of the Ministry of Labor, approximately 1.5 million private sector employees, i.e. 60.7% of all private sector workers (2,460,720) had a monthly income of up to €1,200 mixed in 2025. These employees received salary increases of €10 to €50 per month at the end of January after the latest government tax regulations, depending on how many children they have. With one child, the increase was approximately €15, with two children about €20 and with three children almost €50 per month.
Of course, a €50 increase in an employee’s salary, that is, an additional €600 per year in his income, is progress. But if one has three children, this increase remains negligible. And in any case, it is unacceptable for ministers to celebrate and boast. Especially if one takes into account the terrible financial difficulties that millions of employees are facing to make ends meet with the jump in food prices and the outrageous rents in large Greek cities. In Athens, where almost half of Greece’s population lives, a studio apartment in the downtown district of Exarchia is now rented for the same price that a two-room apartment in the well-heeled suburb of Kifissia was rented for a few years ago. As international research shows, 30% of Greeks now spend more than 40% of their income on the house in which they live.
In the latest survey by the Labor Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE), six out of 10 people state that their income is not enough to make ends meet. In 18 days the salary has been exhausted. The same survey states that 83.5% of those employed do not have the ability to save even a single euro and 24.9% have overdue debts to the state. At the same time, a Eurostat survey shows that 19% of Greeks do not have the money to adequately heat their homes, when the average in the EU is 9% of citizens, with Greece being the worst.
It is true that the country’s economic trajectory is upward, 563,000 new jobs have been created since 2019 and the average salary in the private sector increased in 2025 to €1,516 from €1,478 in 2024, and with the adoption of free collective bargaining it will be further strengthened. However, citizens are still paid worse than in 2009, just before the country’s government-debt crisis erupted, and the recent economic growth and prosperity only marginally reaches the vast majority of those working in the private and public sector who were financially exhausted with the bailouts and harsh austerity imposed.
So, the government should avoid celebratory comments. And instead of announcing, for public relations purposes, a revision of the Constitution and 18 measures to combat chronic shortcomings of the state – seven years after the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis took power – let’s look for ways to solve the people’s real problems.
