“Mr Marinakis once again appeared as a druid who, with his ‘cauldron’ of lies and alchemy, is trying to turn black into white.”
That is the assessment of Kostas Tsoukalas, spokesman for PASOK-Movement for Change, responding to government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis after his remarks on the gap between wages and the EU average.
Eurostat’s figures, published last week, have demolished the government’s narrative.
Greece ranks second-to-last in the European Union (EU) for average annual wages, and has one of the lowest rates of wage growth. Between 2019 and 2025, Greek wages rose by just 17.6% in nominal terms, compared with 26.5% in the EU.
Over the same period, food inflation rose by more than 40%, while increases in energy and oil also hit record highs.
In 2025, the average Greek wage was just 45.3% of the EU average, down from 48.7% in 2019.
Mr Marinakis, congratulations on reaching the point, after seven and a half years, of comparing yourselves with the performance of the Tsipras-Kammenos government.”...