Money for the unemployed? Here, take some new measures!

Talks with the Troika about the fund budgets and the mid-term program targets have reached a dead end.

During the dramatic consultations that lasted for more than 10 hours, Troika technocrats who met with General Secretary of Social Security, Athina Dretta, vetoed the issuing of additional funds in the battle against unemployment!

In particular, they demanded an explanation as to why the ministry is calling for an additional grant of 700 -750 million for OAED, which translates to an increase in deficits and exceeding the general budget.

The ministry representatives replied that the extra money is needed to strengthen Social Security, which has significant revenue shortfalls due to unemployment, while extra funds are needed for OAED (1,9 billion have been budgeted for this year) to implement programs in order to retain employment.

The auditors replied categorically that if we do not want to lose the OAED programs, funds should be saved from other resources, suggesting that we should implement additional measures. They also expressed doubts about the ability of funds to reduce undeclared work by 10 to 12 percentage points, when the figure currently stands at 26%.

And they believe that during a recession period the target of a fund revenue increase of 4,5bil euros is a “financial miracle”, doubting the arguments of the Labour ministry who say they will achieve this by launching checks and introducing pungent fines. But they retain their optimism that revenue will increase by controlling the unemployment hike (it’s around 14,9% and will start dropping to 13,1% from 2012).