FLASH
Shkruar nga PamfletiThe government will use tax breaks and other financial incentives to encourage people to have more children.
Greece has announced drastic measures, including tax breaks and other financial incentives, to address a population decline that is on track to make it the oldest nation in Europe.
The prime minister said the 1.6 billion euro aid package was dictated by one of the biggest challenges facing the Mediterranean nation: a demographic crisis of unprecedented scale.
"We know that the cost of living is one thing if you don't have one child and another if you have two or three children," Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday after announcing the policies. "So as a state we need to find a way to reward our citizens who make the choice [to have children]."
The measures, which range from a 2 percentage point cut for all tax brackets to a zero rate for low-income families with four children, will be implemented in 2026, Mitsotakis said. He called the package the boldest tax reform implemented in Greece in more than 50 years.
The policies build on other initiatives by the center-right government to address this issue.
With fertility rates in Greece among the lowest in Europe - at 1.4 children per woman, the reproduction rate is well below the replacement level of 2.1 - Mitsotakis has called the problem a "national threat".
The Greek population is on track to fall from its current 10.2 million to well under 8 million by 2050, when 36% will be over the age of 65, according to Eurostat.
Acknowledging that the decline had taken on existential proportions, Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said fertility rates had halved since the start of the country's economic crisis 15 years ago.
"Our tax reform will give great emphasis to this problem... as head of the economic team, I would say that our main priority is the demographic issue," he said.
Greece's nearly decade-long crisis has been widely blamed for the alarming decline. That's partly because young people were among those hit hardest by the austerity measures demanded in return for international bailouts that kept Athens out of bankruptcy and debt-ridden EU countries.
More than 500,000 Greeks left the country in search of work during the crisis, an exodus of mostly young and talented citizens that the government is trying to reverse.
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