Greeks to Get More Support to Deal With Soaring Energy and Fuel Costs

GreekPrime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Photo source: @PrimeMinisterGR

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced on Tuesday a handful of measures including an increased gas subsidy and cash incentives to replace old energy-consuming appliances, to help Greeks deal with soaring energy and fuel costs. 

The prime minister said the relief measures budgeted at 580 million euros will apply for three months until September and concern some 3 million vehicle owners.

Mitsotakis announced the extra measures during a cabinet meeting earlier today.

More Subsidies for Greeks

More specifically, support measures announced are:

– the Fuel Pass – introduced last month to cover rising gas prices – has been increased from 40 euros to 80 euros for cars and from 35 euros to 60 euros for motorcycles

– a second round of the Fuel Pass 2 program opens on July 1 for a duration of three months to the end of September. Apply for the Fuel Pass 2 program here 

– Fuel Pass support on the islands – which will increase from 70 euros to 100 euros for cars and to 70 euros for motorcycles

– a subsidy keeping diesel fuel at lower cost will also be extended 

– the Power Pass program – which covers 60 percent of the increase in electricity bills for eligible households. So far more than 500,000 people have applied for the subsidy which covers bills issued from December 1 2021 to May 31, 2022. The application deadline is on June 30. Apply here

– the government will cover 30 to 50 percent of the cost for the replacement of some 400,000 energy-consuming household appliances including air conditioners, refrigerators or freezers budgeted at 150 million euros. Interested parties can apply for the “Recycle-Change Appliance” program starting today through to July 5 at 3pm here

– farmers will receive a return in August of a Special Consumption Tax for fuel they purchased in the first half of 2022. 

Later Tuesday, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras will present the relief measures in detail.

Greek Finance Minister Christos Staikouras. Photo source: @cstaikouras

“These initiatives come to relieve our weakest fellow citizens, the middle class,” said Mitsotakis, adding that applications for the Power Pass subsidy have already exceeded 450,000. 

“We are well aware of the fact that the new measures cannot deal to an absolute degree with the consequences of global disruption. They can, however, relieve the intensity,” he said. 

It should be noted that despite ongoing increases, Greek employees’ wages have remained the same for the last decade since the outbreak of the economic crisis and in many cases reduced due to the Covid-19 crisis.

So far, government measures taken to address increasing fuel and energy costs have amounted to some 8 billion euros.