Mitsotakis pledges exit from crisis, more investments
In a speech on the sidelines of the Thessaloniki International Fair on Saturday night, the leader of the conservative opposition New Democracy Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that an ND-led administration would extract Greece from its protracted crisis while promoting the investments that will secure its transition to growth.
“The responsibility for the country’s exit from the crisis falls to us,” he said, noting that the current leftist-led administration lack the knowledge, the will and the capability to accelerate Greece's exit from the crisis. “They don’t know, they don’t want to and they can’t,” he said.
“We are here to do whatever is necessary to change the country’s image,” Mitsotakis told an audience of the country’s political and business elite in the northern port. “We do not deserve to live in misery,” he said, noting that Greece cannot be “a poor version of some Latin American republic.” “We can do better than this, I am deeply convinced.”
Mitsotakis listed ND’s three key priorities as: “the creation of jobs through investments, the reduction of taxation and the support of the weak.”
Specifically, Mitsotakis said, an ND government would reduce the hugely unpopular property tax, known as ENFIA, by 30 percent over two years. He also pledged a drastic simplification of tax laws, promising that the final framework would remain in place for five years in an attempt to reassure investors wary about frequent changes to tax regulations.
He pledged that investment projects in Elliniko, south of Athens and Skouries, Halkidiki, that are currently stalled, would move forward under an ND administration.
The ND leader also pledged to streamline the public sector, boost job creation for young Greeks and revoke a constitutional ban on private universities.
