As part of his tour of the Thessaly region, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis held a comprehensive meeting at the Town Hall of the municipality of Farkadona, one of the areas of Thessaly that Daniel affected.

During the meeting, the progress made in the restoration of the area and the timetable for the completion of interventions currently being implemented as part of the broader plan for the reconstruction of Thessaly, which provides for €3 billion in expenditure and investment, were discussed.

There was also an overview of the most targeted state aid measures, which include the payment of €182.7 million in first aid to more than 50,500 beneficiaries, the allocation of €237.7 million to local authorities, and the special business support scheme specifically for the municipalities of Palamas and Farkadona.

In the context of the meeting, the Prime Minister made the following statement:

I want you to have a sense of all the resources we are spending and will spend on the restoration of Thessaly. We are talking about €3 billion, which is roughly divided into about €1.5 billion in support and rehabilitation, state aid, ELGA, housing, support for local authorities, and about €1.5 billion more in the significant infrastructure projects that the Ministry of Finance is launching.

That is the cost. It may well be more, but that is the cost of this major natural disaster. It will increase because we have not yet included in that the major projects and the funding of the major dam projects that we will be talking about this afternoon. But these are projects that we should be doing for Tesla anyway.

I want to repeat to you that if this natural disaster had not put the Greek economy in a phase of growth and fiscal stability, things would have been much more difficult. Because we are well on our feet, we are in a position today to have already spent a total of 650 million for rehabilitation and support. 

Obviously, what I hear, and I hear it everywhere, is that we need to speed up the processes. This is very localised, so it is very important because each case is unique where there is a delay.