Tax avoidance by the state?
There are some of our fellow citizens who, for reasons of economic survival, join the National Guard. According to the law, “their daily compensation for participating in missions is fixed at 16 euros” – if they have any missions.
These missions are considered by the Ministry of Defense to be “volunteer work,” which is strictly prohibited in the private sector. But the state makes the rules and breaks them, and that is hard to change. The reason that this job was described as “volunteering” is that the government did not want to create new “armies” of contract staff, whom a minister would later make permanent staff. Hence the 16 euros is characterized as compensation and not as a daily wage.
But what Defense Minister Nikos Dendias considers “voluntary work,” Labor and Social Security Minister Adonis Georgiadis calls “normal” work. As we are officially informed about their duties, “national guards provide their services to the armed forces of the country by being employed in a specific project, with specific regular hours, duration and tasks, regardless of the fact that a dependent labor relationship is not created.” Therefore, they cannot have an unemployment card that would allow them to be hired somewhere else through the programs of Greece’s employment agency DYPA (formerly known as OAED).
But if someone is “employed in a specific project with specific regular hours, duration and duties,” then the employer must pay contributions for the insurance of this employee. The Defense Ministry refuses to do this. As we said previously, the state makes the rules and breaks them, but does it reach the point of avoiding paying social security contributions?
PASOK MP Hara Kefalidou has asked two questions in Parliament on the subject. There is an opinion published by the Ombudsman about the absurdity of wanting national guards to be “sometimes volunteers and sometimes employees.” But nobody in the government is listening.
The strange thing is that a bill initially stated that “the status of national guards does not entail the loss of the status of a job seeker nor does it deprive the right to register in the Digital Register of the Public Employment Service. The compensation paid does not constitute remuneration for the provision of services in the form of employment or income from salaried work.” Yet, in the law that was finally approved in Parliament (5018/2023) this provision is missing. The reason, apparently, is that unemployed national guards would increase the official unemployment figures.
So, in order for the government to boast about achieving “the lowest unemployment since 2009,” some (vulnerable) people do not have insurance and are considered “volunteers,” despite the fact that they are working normally. This is quite the reform.
