Greece’s prime minister on Tuesday announced 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) in financial benefits for lower-income households and the public investment program, after the country became one of the few European Union members to post a budget surplus in 2024.
Only six of the EU’s 27 member nations posted a surplus for 2024, figures released by Eurostat showed. Greece’s surplus of 1.3% of gross domestic product — compared to an overall EU deficit of 3.2% — was a marked improvement in financial performance for a country that was deeply mired in a debt crisis that roiled the EU and international financial markets about a decade ago.
The figures “record a significant overperformance by the national economy and a surplus in state coffers. Which means that, with everyone’s help, we did much better than we expected,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address to the nation.
“Dynamic growth, along with the fight against tax evasion and a series of other reform measures, brought additional revenue, even above the targets we had set,” Mitsotakis said. “So despite the strict European fiscal rules, a significant portion of them can now be returned to citizens.”
In order to tackle housing problems, renters will have the cost of one month’s rent returned to them each November, starting this year, Mitsotakis said, while 250 euros (nearly $290) per year will be given at the end of each November to older, disabled and uninsured people.
Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said that the rent returns will be allocated to households according to annual income levels, and will apply to 948,000 households, or about 80% of renters in Greece, while the 250-euro benefit will apply to a total of 1.4 million people.
An additional 500 million euros ($575 million) per year will be paid into the country’s Public Investment Program to speed up public infrastructure and social projects “and, amidst international instability, to increase investments so that new jobs continue to be created,” he added.
Greece’s fiscal performance has been steadily improving since it began emerging a few years ago from a nearly decade-long financial crisis which saw it lose access to borrowing on the international bond market, leaving it dependent on successive international bailouts. Unemployment skyrocketed as the country saw a quarter of its economy wiped out.