Editorial Ta Nea: Bolder government initiatives needed for inflation crisis

The agreement between the development ministry and supermarket chains regarding a list of 50 basic products on which inflationary price increases will be kept very low is a step in the right direction.

A single step, however, is not enough to weather what is widely expected to be the harshest winter in Europe since WWII.

Although Greeks have experienced a series of major crises in the past decade (a huge economic crisis followed by the pandemic), the current energy and inflation crises, that are expected to worsen, clearly demand bolder policies and an even greater effort by the government to address them.

This is necessary because the harsh conditions that these crises create, combined with the lingering repercussions of the previous ones, have a cumulative effect.

One faces the clear prospect that this accumulated burden will have an explosive impact on household budgets, and by extension on social cohesion.

Such a bleak day-to-day reality for citizens makes it imperative for the government to adopt more initiatives in the direction of price freezes on basic products.

Constant price hikes are hitting most households very hard.

That is why the state has a duty to ensure that already vulnerable groups will not become poorer, and that the rest of society will not become impoverished.