Mitsotakis: “Integration of legal immigrants” is part of the solution to Greece’s demographic problem

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned on Wednesday that Greece’s aging population and declining birth rates pose a serious threat to the country’s ability to grow, announcing the creation of a national council tasked with reversing negative demographic trends.

“We are not dealing with a threat to our national identity, but a direct challenge to the country’s ability to produce wealth on an individual and collective level, thereby maintaining a social fabric that brings people together,” Mitsotakis said at a conference in Athens. “The danger is immediate and significant,” he said. “Only if we look closely at the threat can we counter it.”

He emphasised that the government offers a multifaceted approach to the issue: from financial and fiscal incentives to combat brain drain*, positive news about new investments to incentives for low-cost housing policies through a comprehensive program.

The Prime Minister touched upon the issue of the integration of legal immigrants into Greek society in response to the problem of labor shortages in such sectors as primary and construction.

It should be noted that the first integration of legal immigrants was proposed in 2019 by the then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the plenary session of Parliament, recall mass media: “The New Democracy right reacted strongly to this proposal with accusations of population change”(having come to power, the ND significantly complicated the acquisition of citizenship for foreigners, raising the requirements to an absurd level. Approx. Editorial).

“But be careful, the new policy will not be implemented in such a way that anyone is left behind, i.e. young Greeks will not be able to find work or that there are middle-aged working conditions for foreign workers.

A country with a middle-aged population can be renewed by people who accept its values, can create a family here and keep it,” he stressed. “I am not talking about a simple matter, but we must look at it with responsibility, seriousness and courage, and national confidence in ourselves and in a culture that has existed for centuries.”

Greece’s population is expected to decline over the next 20 years, while a decade-long economic crisis has exacerbated the problem, mainly due to the emigration of 450,000* people of working age.

*More than 800,000 people have left Greece since 2009. At the same time, most of those who left are specialists with secondary specialized and higher education who have not received decent pay in their homeland.

Moreover, according to the latest interviewAs a result, 77.1% of young people in Greece are ready to emigrate abroad in search of work. And this is a real disaster for the country. This figure is significantly higher than during the years of the memorandums that brought Greece to its knees.

In fact, under the current rule of the New Democracy, contrary to the sweet speeches of Mitsotakis “of a beautiful country” and money can not buy happiness”, the situation is getting worse every day. And the creation of a “national council”, with a high probability, will result in another “feeding trough” for “our own”.