Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 15-10-08

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Alt. FM Xydakis: The Dublin Treaty is obviously fruitless

[02] ND leader Meimarakis warns PM Tsipras against taking new measures

[03] Gov't focuses on combating large-scale tax evasion‏

[01] Alt. FM Xydakis: The Dublin Treaty is obviously fruitless

Xydakis noted that Greece believes that the "hotspots" for reception and identification of refugees should be in Turkey and the refugees to be able to be allocated to the reception countries, according to the quotas.

"We must not leave the refugees to get into boats to cross the Aegean, because it is something that carries the risk of drowning and on the other hand it supports the trafficking network," he said and denied that the countries are pressed to open Evros river crossing. "There is no such issue," he said and referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's position that the Dublin Treaty should change he noted: "It is natural for us to be interested in a new adjustement of the treaties because the Dublin Treaty is obviously fruitless."

"Greece has longstanding proposals on a change in the Dublin Treaty because the readmission conditions are against our country and because we are the recipients of a huge inflow of refugees and migrants," he stressed and expressed the opinion that "EU bilateral agreements with Turkey and Pakistan are not followed and Europe does not implement effective readmission channels for economic migrants. The migrants' countries of origin should accept an agreement on union level," he underlined.

Asked on the archaeological excavation in ancient Amphipolis (Xydakis was former Culture Minister), he noted: "The case of Amphipolis is now on the right course, the importance of the monument is recognised by all." He added that "the arguments should remain among the scientists and on scientific level the debate should be held with documentations and not over-interpretations that excite and stimulate the expectations of the people and in parallel the state must ensure the restoration and promotion of the monument as well as the fund and condition for a serious and documentated scientific research."

[02] ND leader Meimarakis warns PM Tsipras against taking new measures

More specifically, he accused the government that it needs to take new measures, in the framework of the memorandum, that has not yet disclosed to the people.

Upon his arrival at the offices of the party, Meimarakis referred to the additional measures asked by the IMF and warned Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that the option of submitting new measures for approval in Parliament should not cross his mind.

"A few days ago Tsipras expressed his content over his visit in the US. Today the IMF is asking for new measures of 1.5 billion euros. This confirms that he has a secret agenda. He should not even think of bringing these measures in Parliament," he underlined.

[03] Gov't focuses on combating large-scale tax evasion‏

In a television interview, Alexiadis said there were currently around 25,000 tax evasion cases with an estimated average tax of 600,000 euros each, of which less than 1,500 have been inspected.

"We do not want to focus mainly on small and medium-sized tax evasion. We move towards copying the operation of European tax agencies which focus mainly on large-scale tax evasion," Alexiadis said.

The Greek minister noted that action will be taken next week to protect and strengthen tax inspection bodies and added that action will be taken to extend the time for inspecting a so-called "Lagarde list". "We will inspect all large tax-evasion cases," he said, while commenting on changes in a 100-installment scheme to repay overdue tax debt, he noted that conditions will be stricter for remaining in the scheme. Alexiadis said that a special property tax for 2015 will be unchanged from 2014, "with changes only in some very small categories", but noted that the target for next year was to achieve revenues of 2.65 billion euros and to change real estate asset values by September 2016. He said that the ministry was examining plans to impose a property tax on real estate assets owned by Greek citizens abroad, copying a similar scheme introduced in Italy.

The ministry also drafts a new legislation offering incentives for a voluntary revealing of capital, but keeping all legal procedures in cases of smuggling. He said that another new draft bill will be a property register for all assets domestic and abroad.

Alexiadis said that the government has already found a list of equal measures to replace a 23 pct VAT on education and said that the Finance ministry wanted to introduce universally the use of plastic money and electronic money transactions in the country.

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