Greek civil service to become ‘more effective’, says minister

Greece will today announce measures to streamline its civil service and crack down on tax evasion in a bid to secure a bailout extension.
Finance ministry experts have spent the weekend finalising the fiscal and structural measures Athens’ left-led government will put forward today – the deadline agreed under a deal fleshed out at a last-ditch summit of Eurozone finance ministers in Brussels late on Friday.
Minister of state Nikos Pappas told Greece’s Mega Channel on Sunday: “We are compiling a list of measures to make the Greek civil service more effective and to combat tax evasion,” adding that the reforms being proposed would take the Greek economy “out of sedation”.
The announcement comes less than two years after the previous government approved controversial reforms of the civil service.
The legislation, passed in July 2013, opened the way for mass dismissals of state employees in return for a €6.8bn aid disbursement by international lenders.
The UK’s Financial Times reported that the governing coalition said at the time it was “committed to sacking 15,000 civil servants by the end of 2014” under the bailout terms.