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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-10-31
CONTENTS
[01] Proposed ND law will lead to fewer jobs and less money for state,
Pappas says
[01] Proposed ND law will lead to fewer jobs and less money for state,
Pappas says
Main opposition New Democracy was shedding 'crocodile tears' for workers
but real tears for TV channel owners, Minister of State Nikos Pappas
said on Monday, commenting on ND's proposed legislation for issuing
television content provider licences.
According to Pappas, the main opposition's law was essentially identical
to his own, apart from abolishing the minimum number of employees required
to set up a TV channel, which SYRIZA had set at 400, and setting up a
licencing procedure that minimised the amounts that could be earned by
the Greek state, instead of an open tender.
"In other ways, ND's proposed law repeats using slightly looser terms
the conditions provided under law 4339/15 in articles 1-15. In precisely
those articles that ND wants abolished. In precisely that law which,
in its basic articles, was passed by a majority significantly greater
than the government's."
ND's proposed legislation seeks to prevent any kind of tender process
for issuing television licences, the prime minister's press office said
in an announcement on Monday. At the same time, ND's leader Kyriakos
Mitsotakis "has discovered an 'undermining of democratic institutions'
and wants the government to fall," it added.
"The masks have fallen. At a time when the country in the midst of a
critical phase of the negotiations for the second review and the debt,
ND and Mr. Mitsotakis are openly seeking destabilisation. And they are
doing this in order to defend a closed cartel of channel owners, to
prevent any prospect of a tender and avert that which has not happened
in the last 27 years: to protect the public interest in the broadcasting
sector at the expense of intertwined interests.
"From the first moment of his election, Mitsotakis has been paying off
debts to corruption. And he can no longer hide this even on the level
of pretexts," the PM's office concluded.
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