Michalis Katrinis weighs in on developments regarding the Katselis Law in a post on X:
On the “Katseli Law”
1. The “Katseli Law” was passed by the @pasok government, with the troika taking a hard line against it.
2. Thanks to the “Katseli Law,” thousands of vulnerable borrowers were able to save their primary residences from foreclosure during the years of the economic crisis.
3. SYRIZA—led by Mr. Tsipras—DID NOT VOTE FOR the “Katseli Law” in 2010.
4. SYRIZA—led by Mr. Tsipras—replaced (as the government) the “Katseli Law” with the failed Law 4605/19.
5. SYRIZA—while Mr. Tsipras was its president—NEVER called for the “Katseli Law” to be reinstated into the domestic legal system. Therefore, it NEVER, in practice, defended the “Katseli Law.”
6. PASOK has submitted (on numerous occasions from 2019 to the present) a bill to reinstate the “Katseli Law.” The New Democracy government has NEVER agreed to debate PASOK’s proposal in Parliament.
7. Faced with the toughest troika, PASOK passed a law (Law 3689/2019—the Katseli Law) to protect vulnerable borrowers, and thousands of our fellow citizens were able to keep their primary residences thanks to PASOK’s law.
8. Today, with no troika and no memorandum in place, just over 550 borrowers hold a certificate of vulnerable borrower status (which protects their primary residence ex officio). And this, at a time when there are 1 million “non-performing” loans, 4 million tax identification numbers with overdue tax debts, and 2.4 million records with overdue debts to the EFKA…
9. Yesterday’s ministerial amendment was not introduced because the government took the initiative, but because it was preceded by a binding decision of the Supreme Court, with which the government WAS REQUIRED to comply.
10. The retroactive application of the amendment is positive; however, it is being implemented to prevent potential future legal challenges and to clearly determine the fiscal cost resulting from the forfeiture of the “Hercules” guarantees. This is a development that is being welcomed with relief by servicers, funds, and banks, which can now accurately recalculate their accounting—and other—"losses" (or rather, the loss of excess revenue from abusive interest rates).Whatever the government says is simply pre-election rhetoric (both national and intra-party)…
10. The “Katseli Law” was drafted—for the overwhelming majority of its provisions—by the then Secretary General for Consumer Protection, Mr. Dimitrios Spyrakos, a lawyer with extensive experience and a long history in consumer advocacy movements. Dimitrios Spyrakos is a prominent member of PASOK and currently serves as secretary of PASOK’s private debt relief division.
11. Evidently, the “Katseli Law” was introduced under the political responsibility of the then-minister in charge, Ms. Louka Katseli.
It was approved by the cabinet of the PASOK government under Prime Minister George Papandreou and passed in Parliament by the “heroic” PASOK parliamentary group during the 2009–2012 term (and New Democracy had also voted in favor at the time, with Mr. Kostis Hatzidakis as the rapporteur—though it later vilified the very law it had passed!).
Whatever personal political choices Ms. Katseli may have made do not absolve SYRIZA and its leadership of their consistently negative stance toward the “Katseli Law.”
History cannot be erased, it cannot be swept under the rug, and it cannot be rewritten.
Borrowers know that ONLY PASOK thought of them, supported them, and defended them IN PRACTICE!
And it will do so again when our citizens give us the first mandate.