Wednesday , February 12 2025
Home / News / Economy / EU Commission blatantly intervenes in protection of ex ELSTAT president accused of swelling Greek debt

EU Commission blatantly intervenes in protection of ex ELSTAT president accused of swelling Greek debt

“The European Commission has never, and will not, as a matter of principle, comment on individual national legal proceedings, […]. However, …” Despite the loyalty to  alleged EC principles, Marianne Thyssen, the European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, threw all these principles over the board and took a clear position in favor of former President of  Greek Statistics Authority ELSTAT, Andreas Georgiou.

Clear for & that data on Greek gov debt during 2010-2015 were fully reliable & accurately reported

I have no idea, whether Commissioner Thyssen made an investigation on the debt of 2009 with the aid of a super clever tool mechanism – if she has she should also inform the Greek governmental and judicial authorities and spare Greek taxpayers the cost of taking Georgiou to a trial.

I also have absolutely no clue, why Commissioner Thyssen politically intervenes in a court case which is still running.

In July 2016, the Greek Supreme Court upheld felony charges against Georgiou for having harmed the “national interest”. A possible sentence would be of up to 10 years in prison.

Georgiou is being accused to have swelled the government deficit in 2009 thus creating conditions that led to second bailout and strict austerity measures.

He was appointed to ELSTAT post in 2010 under the PASOK government.

According to German conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Greece’s deficit figures were sharply revised upwards and gave rise to the loss of confidence of creditors. Greece got rescue money and had to in return undertake to build a new Statistics Authority. For this task, Georgiou was recruited in 2010 from his position as Deputy Chief Statistician of the International Monetary Fund. The new Authority corrected the deficit figures even further upwards.”

Greece’s debt crisis erupted in late 2009, when a conservative New Democracylost the elections and socialist PAOSK took over thus prompting a new budget calculation that projected a deficit of over 12% of gross domestic product, double the projection of the previous government. this brought the first bailout in the country, in May 2010.

In November 2010, the ELSTAT under Georgiou, said that the deficit for 2009 had in fact been over 15% of GDP, a figure verified by Eurostat. Georgiou has said he faced resistance within Elstat to reporting such a high figure.

In 2011, a former ELSTAT employee had claimed that Georgiou had inflated the deficit numbers to justify austerity measures.In 2013, a prosecutor brought felony charges against Georgiou and two other agency employees, accusing them of falsifying 2009 fiscal data.

He denied the accusation and the charge was dropped but was taken up again in 2015. In August of the same year, Georgiou stepped down from ELSTAT.

What is the interest of Commissioner Thyssen from Belgium to intervene in favor of a defendant? In her speech and statement supporting Andreas Georgiou, Marianne Thyssen said among others:

 

“You might have seen statements in the media regarding the court case against the former President of the Greek statistical authority ELSTAT in the 2010-2015 period and the quality of official statistics in Greece.

I would like to dispel any confusion and get the record straight.

From the Commission’s perspective, and as the Commissioner also responsible for Eurostat, it is crucial that the statistical basis for our economic decision making is and remains reliable. And for the Commission and Eurostat it is absolutely clear that data on Greek Government debt during 2010-2015 have been fully reliable and accurately reported to Eurostat, unlike the situation before this period.

Let me be clear, the Commission has never, and will not, as a matter of principle, comment on individual national legal proceedings, and I am not here for that today. However, we are concerned about statements in the media regarding the case which appear to call into question the validity of the fiscal data underpinning the Stability Support Programme for Greece. Such allegations may create major damage to the credibility of Greek statistics.

Against this background, our position is clear.  First, we expect the Greek authorities to actively and publicly challenge the false impression that data were manipulated during 2010-2015 and to protect ELSTAT and its staff from such unfounded claims.”

from Thyssen’s statement

Of course, the European Commission via Commissioner Thyssen has to protect the validity of the Greek debt data 2010-2015.

Otherwise, the whole EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the European Stability Mechanism and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble will have to pick up the thread “Greek Debt – Three Bailout Agreements” right from the beginning and spend years trying to restore their credibility.

Not to mention, the money they will have to pay back to millions of impoverished  Greeks who were deprived form jobs and descent living for the sake of paying interest rates to creditors.

PS by the way, German media are also in favor of Georgiou…

Check Also

Greece gives official go-ahead to Chevron for hydrocarbon exploration in “Block A2” and “South of Peloponnese”

Greece’s Energy and Environment Ministry has officially given the green-light to a  proposal by Chevron …

4 comments

  1. The European Commission is intervening politically because the prosecution of the Head of the Statistical Service is a political decision and nothing to do with statistics. It is a very serious matter indeed, and Greeks should not think that this prosecution is an acceptable venture.
    ~
    The fact is that the preparation and interpretation of statistical data always requires judgements, which are universally shaped by the political mood of the time. The professionals involved in doing their jobs as well as they could cannot be prosecuted for doing their jobs appropriately. Indeed, since 2010 ELSTAT has been more in line with the rest of the developed world than it was before. This is more than can be said for Greek accounting practices — including all the state owned and former stat-owned companies (such as DEH and OTE) whose accounting practices are an absolute disgrace by international standards. They are more appropriate for countries like Ghana or Botswana. Yet the Greek government does nothing to change those, or to prosecute the persons responsible for the mess.

  2. Yes the girl are in favour of the truth. I’m disappointed in you keep talking greece , why are you defending the Greek govt when they are clearly wrong? It’s very obvious this trial is politically motivated.

  3. They protect him because of services rendered by him. And the clique never abandons its children. Cause one day they might need protection themselves.

    Btw. Eurostat itself once was under investigation for corruption.