Nikos Androulakis proposed the establishment of a special parliamentary committee to investigate where the Recovery Fund’s resources were allocated.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament, in response to a question from PASOK regarding how the Fund’s resources were utilized, he essentially referred to the audit that the next Parliament will conduct: “In the next elections, with the political change, we will audit where every last euro went—how it was utilized and which unscrupulous individuals profited at the expense of society,” he said.
He added, addressing the government: “Because you are champions— not only in toxicity, not only in clientelism, not only in the collapse of the welfare state, not only in the dismantling of democratic institutions and parliament, but also in direct contracts and so-called rigged tenders?”
Mr. Androulakis asked the government: “Have you achieved resilience? Have you achieved the goals of changing citizens’ lives and restructuring the economic model that led us into the 2009 crisis?”
And he provided the answers: “No. You have achieved nothing that would make citizens and society feel that you have brought about bold changes.
Instead of designing a coherent strategic framework for the Recovery Fund, there were no clear priorities, project lists that you were constantly revising, no consultation, no dialogue—as happened in other countries—with local government, with the Chambers of Commerce, or with local communities. It was all a closed power circle at Maximos that organized this entire plan.
From the very beginning, we called for a greater emphasis on public infrastructure, railways, investments, and energy storage networks. Why? Because these are the steps we must take to achieve what other European countries have achieved: affordable and safe transportation, a low cost of living and production, and affordable energy for households and for actual producers.
You want a green transition, but not for the many—only for the few. It’s a business scheme, as our member of parliament mentioned earlier.
I proposed a review of the Recovery Fund when I saw all these distortions, Mr. Papathanasis.
We proposed more funding for the National Health System, which is collapsing. We proposed funding for social housing modeled after Portugal, Spain, and Italy.”
He also recalled the response the Prime Minister had given him when he proposed the above (and more) for the use of the Fund: “What did you tell me? Do you remember? The Prime Minister himself. That I’m a populist and, in fact, that I deserve the… ‘Nobel Prize for Irrelevance,’ because the Recovery Fund isn’t being revised.
And not only did you revise it afterward—even though, as you claimed, we ‘didn’t know’ and were supposedly ‘lying’—you revised it four times, proving that you are not only amateurs, and incapable of planning properly within the framework of the European Union.
The result: Even Christoforos Pissaridis—whose proposals formed the basis for “Greece 2.0”—publicly acknowledged that mainly the easy changes were made, but the reforms that would bring about productive transformation in the country remain to be seen.”