ELAS outlines Tsipras’ vision for creating and redistributing wealth

The Greek Left Alliance, known as ELAS, says its central economic goal is to create wealth and then redistribute it sustainably. Evgenia Fotoniata, the party’s political planning chief, presented the approach in an interview with Meganews 104.6 after Alexis Tsipras outlined it at the Thessaloniki International Fair.

Fotoniata said the team behind the plan sought to offer more than a series of campaign promises or an ordinary list of measures. Its aim, she said, was to set out a complete strategy for how the country should develop over the next four years, alongside ELAS’ vision for the following decade.

She said Tsipras’ speech did not focus on electoral pressures, but instead raised substantive issues that would shape public debate in the coming period. The strategy places wealth creation first, identifying large companies, new technologies, export activity, shipbuilding and repair, the defense industry, and biotechnology as sectors where real wealth can be generated.

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The defining demand of the Left, which is redistribution, was developed by Alexis Tsipras very thoroughly yesterday in this first part. What did the president say? He said that the Left’s goal is to achieve sustainable redistribution, to be able to share the wealth we produce steadily and sustainably.

Redistribution remains the Left’s defining demand, Fotoniata said, but ELAS presents it as a long-term and sustainable process. That would require changing the country’s production model. The proposed system would include both small and large businesses, startups, and business clusters, with scope for cooperation and economies of scale.

Fotoniata also discussed the minimum wage. It currently stands at 920 euros, while the proposal would raise it to 1,000 euros. She stressed that the figures concern gross pay and that minimum-wage increases now affect public-sector pay as well, creating a fiscal cost that extends to higher salary grades. She described ELAS’ program as socially oriented, fully costed, and feasible.

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The minimum wage is now directly linked to the pay of public employees. Any increase in the minimum wage also raises the minimum wage in the public sector and, as you understand, affects the next salary grades, which will see an increase. So this now has a fiscal cost.