Fair: opposition reactions to measures

The bundle of measures worth 2.2 billion euros announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis within the framework of the 90th Fair on Sunday 6 September 2026 — as detailed in the Prime Minister’s press conference — provoked immediate reactions from opposition parties. Both PASOK and the Communist Party questioned the scale and design of the measures, while former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras launched personal criticism of the Prime Minister with a videotaped statement. The government, for its part, defended the design of the benefits announced in Thessaloniki, while political confrontation over the content and scale of the package escalated within the same day.

Dimitris Manthos, spokesman of PASOK’s Parliamentary Group, characterised the measures as “half measures” and accused the government of acting as a “guardian of interests”. According to him, the government had ample time over several years to proceed with a change in the country’s productive model, without however this having yielded substantial results so far. Manthos’s position is part of the broader criticism that PASOK levelled against the government’s economic policy, with the party arguing that the Fair announcements do not address structural issues in the Greek economy. This criticism was made on the same day, Sunday 6 September 2026, hours after the Prime Minister announced the package of measures in Thessaloniki, and was placed within the broader framework of political confrontation of the day over the design and scale of government policy in view of 2027.

For its part, Nikos Sofianós, member of the Communist Party’s Political Bureau, questioned the framework within which the measures were presented, arguing that the sum of 2.2 billion euros is small compared to the estimated surplus of the country, which he placed at over 10 billion euros. Particularly sharp was the position of former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who in a videotaped statement characterised Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a “Prime Minister of inflation and corruption” and accused him of contempt for the people.

According to a report in the News, PASOK pointed out that the government had previously mentioned a fiscal space of approximately 1 billion euros, while now it announced a package of measures worth 2.2 billion euros, a difference of 1.2 billion euros that was not publicly explained in the day’s coverage. The government side argued that the measures correspond to real social needs and have a permanent character. According to available reports from the day, no government response was recorded to the specific arithmetic objection regarding fiscal space, an issue that remained open in the political coverage of Sunday 6 September 2026. The confrontation between government and opposition over the scale and design of the measures is expected to continue in the coming days. More on the content of the measures in the Economy section.