Speech by the Special Speaker of PASOK – Movement for Change, Kostas Skandalidis, to the Finance Committee on the preliminary draft budget for 2023 Every legislation is being evaluated and within the framework that is being implemented and I am tempted to make two or three first comments on the preliminary draft budget, which was submitted yesterday by the government and which I imagine next week will come for discussion in the Commission.I have three important comments to make.

The first is that the only thing that one cannot blame the financial staff of the government, is the consistent adherence to the policy of "seeing and doing", to the same ineffective unplanned and deeply unfair financial recipe, a recipe that, keeping the development model that has become a dead end unchanged, burdens daily and disproportionately the family budget of small and medium-sized and vulnerable households. Secondly, at another level, the government's policy is consistent, in the fiscal and macroeconomic acrobatics that it repeats in the formation of this year's Budget, as well as the previous Budgets, with the same optimism and certainty until it proceeds to the revision and completion. Thus, here too, the general government is projected to travel a fiscal distance of 5 billion euros from the primary deficit, minus 1,7% of 2022 in the primary surplus plus 0,7% of 2023, in fact with a growth rate of 2,1% for 2023, compared to the 5,3% projected for 2022 and in fact, with a large decrease in revenues. Thirdly, you continue to devalue provocatively, as was the case with previous budgets and especially last year's budget, the evolution of inflation and its effects. In this Chamber and in plenary, we have had a number of debates on this. At the same time, you underestimate the effects of raising interest rates, which will bring back the problem of bad loans and widen it, as a more pressing problem in the next few months. The possibilities of the extra benefits are also questioned by the Minister of Finance himself. You have distributed a really large sum, as we all say, in a relaxed, clientelistic way, without elementary criteria of justice and development. An economic policy that looks like a bottomless metabarelli, without, moreover, solving the living problems in families, who see from today onwards, especially today, after the latest price increases, the increases galloping and wondering how they will cope. in a, if you like, pleasant and optimistic message, that everything is going well, that our economy is doing well, growth is galloping, everything is going wonderfully, a prosperous country is in front of us and a new page is beginning for the country of certainty and stability. I think that all this has nothing to do with the economic reality of the country and with the way households and especially the vulnerable strata of our economy and small and medium-sized enterprises are experiencing the crisis.