Incomes policy not the courts’ business
Who is ultimately in charge of fashioning the country’s incomes policy? Does responsibility lie with the government, or with the courts? Experience shows that this is not a rhetorical question. In fact, the confusion has often caused problems, putting the government’s economic policy at risk. The latest example is the decision by the Court of First Instance to grant a 176-euro subsidy to local authority employees (OTA) who have appealed to the court. If the ruling eventually applies to all those who are formally entitled to the benefit, the state budget will be burdened with an extra 2.5 billion euros to cover back pay and an annual sum of 627 million euros. It goes without saying that imposing this additional cost threatens to wreck the current budget as well as next year’s. This will also take its toll on the government’s ability to fulfill its promises of improving the economic conditions for the lower income strata of society (bigger pensions for those in the OGA farmers’ fund, the special Social Solidarity Allowance [EKAS] and so on). Most absurdly, the 176-euro allowance was inaugurated by the Socialist government of Costas Simitis and was granted to public sector employees who were not entitled to any benefits in order to narrow the gap with their more privileged colleagues. It was precisely those privileged civil servants receiving greater benefits who went to court and successfully claimed the extra money. This situation cannot be allowed to continue. The ongoing constitutional revision offers a great opportunity to fix the problem via legal means, for the problem is essentially a failure to draw a clear line between the judicial and executive powers. The correction of a specific injustice through a court of law is one thing, but a court’s decision to reverse the government’s incomes policy and to impose billions of euros on Greek taxpayers for the sake of specific groups is quite another.
