Dear friends, good day to you!
Politics has an old habit. When it cannot solve a problem, it tries to postpone it. To buy time. And, if possible, to buy with it a little social calm as well.
This is more or less how yesterday's agreement of the government with the food industry and the supermarkets can be read.
Two months without price increases on the shelves, maintenance of the reductions on about 2,000 products, and abolition, from July 1, of the cap on the gross profit margin.
In other words, a truce.
A truce that has two sides. On the one hand, the cap is being withdrawn, a measure that the Minister of Development, Takis Theodorikakos, described as “wildly interventionist, socialist.”
On the other hand, in its place comes a joint commitment by the government, industry, and retail for stable prices throughout the summer. The tool changes. The goal remains the same: that high prices not reach supermarket checkouts together with the vacationers.
Is this bad? Quite the contrary. Except that it does not solve the problem.
If the commitments are kept, millions of consumers will get through the summer without new burdens on basic food items. No one can view negatively a development that protects, even temporarily, the family income.
On the other hand, the agreement does not address the causes of high prices. It addresses their consequences. The Greek market continues to display the paradox of high prices in a country among those with the lowest disposable incomes in Europe. This is not a natural phenomenon. It is the result of distortions that everyone has recognized for years and no one eliminates.
Has anything changed in intra-group transactions? Have the opaque practices that often determine prices from the factory to the shelf been limited? Have the excessive charges of every kind in the supply chain been addressed? Has competition been substantially strengthened?
The answer to all this is “no.”
And of course no one expected that all this would be resolved in a single meeting at the Maximos Mansion, when it has not been resolved until now, during the seven-year governance of New Democracy.
Because as long as the distortions remain, every intervention looks more like management of the problem than its solution.
But there is something else as well.
The calendar of the economy is rarely independent of the calendar of politics. The two months gained in the market are also two months gained in politics. Summer is, after all, the ideal season for a ceasefire. The difficult things come afterward.
With the new school year. With the increased household expenses. With winter and the uncertainty of energy costs. With international developments that no one can predict, especially in a world where a new flare-up in the Middle East can within a few days overturn every plan.
Yesterday's agreement is not negligible. It is useful. Perhaps even necessary.
It is simply not a solution. It is a summer truce.
And truces always have one common property: they do not end the war. They simply postpone the next battle. The real test will not come in August. It will come when the first autumn rains fall. Then it will not be judged whether the “gentlemen's agreement” was kept. It will be judged whether the Greek market became fairer and more competitive or whether a little more political time was simply gained.
Because the first autumn rains have one property that no government agreement can change: they wash away illusions and reveal what truly endured through the summer.