Editorial Ta Nea: Challenge

In the years of the bailout memorandums one of the most common complaints of European officials concerned Greece’s reluctance to “take ownership” of the economic adjustment programmes.

The answer to that criticism was to be expected and not entirely unreasonable.

How can you embrace a programme in the drafting of which you have not been allowed to participate and which has been imposed on you?

Today Greece has the opportunity to draft its own economic roadmap for the future.

With 31.9 billion euros in EU funding that the country will receive it finally has a chance to make a much desired leap forward into a new era.

The EU recovery fund creates substantial and realistic prospects for a re-structuring and re-orientation (assuming that there was an orientation in the first place) of the battered domestic economy.

The first draft of the plan crated by a commission headed by the Cypriot Nobel Prize winning economist Christopher Pissarides (photo, top right screen opposite PM) has already been sent to the European Commission and the final draft has been submitted to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for approval.

Such opportunities are rare and therefore the effort to overhaul the Greek economy must succeed.

There is no other way for the country to definitively transcend the recession wrought by the unprecedented public health crisis and to build the foundations for healthy and well-grounded development.

That requires the greatest possible political consensus.

All political forces must realise that this plan will be the compass for Greece’s journey into the new era.

It is a national project that extends far beyond the term of a single government and should in no way be exploited to attain partisan objectives.

This must be a national plan both in word and deed. It is imperative.