Prime Minister Kyriakos, in an exclusive interview with ANT1 television that is to air tonight, stated that the second consecutive wage hike that he announced last year will be implemented two months earlier, on 1 May.

Mitsotakis said the increase will be substantially more than two percent, which was the level of the first minimum wage hike (663 euros gross), which took effect on 1 January, but he avoided specifying the level of the increase.

‘Nobody unprotected’

Government spokesman Yannis Economou said today that, “Our policy is to leave nobody unprotected in this wave of inflation, and at the same time we will not endanger either the stabilisation of the Greek economy or its growth prospects.”

Mitsotakis told journalist Nikos Hatzinikolaou in his interview that the minimum wage increase will be “substantial”.

The fiscal space for the minimum wage increase was created by a 2021 growth rate of over eight percent. The growth projection for 2022 is between 4.5 percent and five percent.

As regards energy, the government has since September offered subsidies worth 1.3bn euros to bolster households.