IF THE STATE CAN SCORE CITIZENS, CITIZENS MUST BE ABLE TO AUDIT THE STATE

A Petition for Immediate Political Accountability, Protection from Disproportionate Financial Pressure, a National Wellbeing Score, and Permanent Democratic Transparency in Greece

TO THE HELLENIC PARLIAMENT, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE HELLENIC REPUBLIC AND THE COMPETENT INDEPENDENT AUTHORITIES

Greece has spent more than a decade asking extraordinary resilience from its citizens.

A sovereign-debt crisis.
Years of austerity.
Falling purchasing power.
Heavy pressure on household budgets.
A pandemic.
An energy crisis.
Inflation.
A housing crisis.
Private debt.
And continuing demographic pressure.

For years, Greek citizens have repeatedly been told that sacrifice, compliance and financial discipline are necessary for the stability of the country.

Today, we ask an equally important question:

WHAT OBLIGATIONS DOES THE STATE HAVE TOWARDS THE STABILITY OF ITS CITIZENS?

THE PRINCIPLE: ACCOUNTABILITY MUST WORK IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

In June 2026, the Hellenic Ministry of National Economy and Finance officially presented a new Credit Assessment System.

According to the Ministry itself, the system is designed to collect and cross-check data from public-sector sources, process those data, produce a creditworthiness rating for natural and legal persons, and potentially exchange ratings with credit-assessment bodies in order to produce a unified assessment. Citizens are to have access to their assessment and the ability to request corrections. [1]

Separately, in January 2026, the Bank of Greece officially launched its Central Credit Register, which collects granular information concerning credit exposures and payment histories and is intended, among other purposes, to improve creditworthiness assessment. [2]

Financial responsibility matters.

Tax evasion must be addressed.
Strategic default must be addressed.
Fraud must be addressed.
Banks must assess genuine financial risk.
The State has a legitimate interest in collecting lawfully owed revenue.

But financial distress is not fraud.

Inability to pay is not automatically deliberate evasion.

And a citizen experiencing economic hardship must not be treated as if financial difficulty were, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing.

Most importantly:

ACCOUNTABILITY CANNOT LEGITIMATELY OPERATE IN ONLY ONE DIRECTION.

If the State develops increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for monitoring the financial behaviour, debts and creditworthiness of citizens, then political parties, governments and public institutions must accept an equally demanding standard of financial transparency, accountability and measurable performance.

A democracy cannot maintain one standard of financial responsibility for the citizen and another for those who make the rules.

POLITICAL PARTIES MUST ALSO BE ACCOUNTABLE

Political parties are not ordinary private organisations.

They nominate governments.

They vote on taxation.

They determine debt-collection rules.

They decide the legal framework governing households and businesses.

They determine how public resources are allocated.

And political parties are eligible to receive financial support from the State.

Article 29 of the Constitution of Greece explicitly provides for guarantees of transparency concerning electoral expenditure and, more broadly, the financial management of political parties. It also provides for auditing through a special body with the participation of senior magistrates. [3]

The Hellenic Parliament already has a Committee for MP and Political Party Auditing responsible for auditing party finances and compliance with political-financing legislation. [4]

This petition does not claim that political-party debt, by itself, constitutes wrongdoing.

It makes a simpler democratic argument:

A political organisation that legislates the financial obligations of citizens must be subject to exceptional transparency regarding its own financial obligations.

Citizens should be able to know, in a clear, standardised and accessible form:

• how much each state-funded political party owes;
• to whom it owes it;
• how much is principal and how much is accumulated interest;
• what amounts are repaid each year;
• whether loans have been restructured;
• what repayment schedules apply;
• whether those schedules are being respected;
• whether future public funding has been assigned or pledged against borrowing;
• and whether any creditor has modified the terms of repayment.

This is not a demand against one political party.

It must apply equally to every governing party, every opposition party and every future political organisation receiving public funding.

The European Commission's 2026 Rule of Law Report for Greece states that, although most political parties complied with political-financing rules, concerns remain regarding transparency and implementation.

The same report states that the number of prosecutions and final judgments in corruption cases, including high-level corruption, remains limited; records only limited progress in improving the lobbying framework; and notes continuing challenges including frequent legislative changes. [5]

These are not partisan accusations.

They are findings of the European Commission.

And they strengthen the case for institutions that are permanent, transparent and independent of whichever political party happens to govern.

THE OFFICIAL DATA SHOW WHY CITIZENS NEED PROTECTION AS WELL AS ENFORCEMENT

According to the Hellenic Statistical Authority's 2025 Survey on Income and Living Conditions:

• 50.5% of the population was financially unable to face an unexpected but necessary expense.

• 41.8% experienced financial difficulty meeting mortgage or rental payments, utility bills, hire-purchase instalments or other loan payments.

• 18.1% was financially unable to keep the home adequately warm or cool.

• 46.6% could not afford one week of holiday away from home.

• 14.9% of the population was experiencing severe material and social deprivation.

Among children aged 17 or younger, severe material and social deprivation reached 15.9%. [6]

These statistics describe something fundamental:

THE FINANCIAL RESILIENCE OF THE POPULATION IS WEAK.

A household that cannot absorb an unexpected necessary expense is not economically secure merely because national fiscal indicators improve.

A worker who pays taxes but cannot afford necessary healthcare is not experiencing prosperity.

A young person who works but cannot afford independent housing cannot build a stable future simply because GDP is rising.

Macroeconomic success and human wellbeing are not the same measurement.

Both matter.

POVERTY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF POVERTY

ELSTAT reports that in 2025, 27.5% of the Greek population — approximately 2.8 million people — was at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

The figure increased from 26.9% in the previous survey year. [7]

Eurostat separately reports that in 2024, 66.8% of people in Greece were considered subjectively poor — by far the highest percentage in the European Union.

Subjective poverty is not the same as the official income-poverty rate. It measures households' own assessment of their difficulty making ends meet, taking into account income, expenditure, debt and wealth.

But the fact that two thirds of a country's population reports this level of economic insecurity cannot simply be dismissed as perception.

Perception becomes politically and economically important when it is this widespread. [8]

HOUSING IS CONSUMING THE FINANCIAL SPACE OF HOUSEHOLDS

According to the European Commission's 2026 Country Report for Greece, housing costs exceeded 40% of disposable household income for 28.9% of the population, compared with 8.2% across the European Union.

The Commission states plainly that housing affordability in Greece has deteriorated. [9]

This matters because disposable income is what remains after the essential costs of living are paid.

A salary can increase while a household becomes less financially secure.

Employment can rise while the ability to form an independent household declines.

Economic growth can coexist with economic suffocation.

That is why the cost of housing must become a central measurement of whether economic policy is succeeding for citizens.

ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE IS ALSO AN ECONOMIC ISSUE

According to Eurostat, among people aged 16 and over who reported needing medical examination or treatment in 2024, 21.9% in Greece said that their medical need was unmet because of cost, waiting times or distance.

This was the highest percentage in the European Union.

The EU average was 3.6%. [10]

A citizen should not be considered economically secure if they are unable to obtain healthcare that they themselves report needing.

The quality of an economy cannot be separated from the ability of its people to convert their income, taxation and public services into an actually functioning life.

THE DEBT DATA ALSO REQUIRE A MORE INTELLIGENT APPROACH

The Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) reported total overdue debt of approximately €113.86 billion as of 1 January 2026, across approximately 3.71 million debtors. [11]

But the distribution of that debt is crucial.

According to AADE:

• 77.5% of overdue debtors owed less than €3,000 each.

• Together, those millions of small debtors represented only 1.3% of the total overdue balance.

• At the opposite end, only 0.7% of debtors owed more than €300,000 each.

• That 0.7% accounted for 82.5% of the total overdue balance. [11]

This should fundamentally affect how we think about debt enforcement.

Millions of small debtors and a very small number of extremely large debtors are not the same policy problem.

They should not be treated as if they were.

The newest available official data from the Centre for the Collection of Social Security Debt (KEAO) show the same need for differentiation.

At the end of June 2026, the current outstanding balance administered by KEAO had reached approximately €52.43 billion.

Yet:

• 69.73% of debtors owed up to €15,000 each;

• 84.47% owed up to €30,000 each;

• while only 3,029 debtors owing more than €1 million each accounted for 24.68% of the entire outstanding balance. [12]

These statistics do not mean that small debts should simply disappear.

They mean that responsible public policy must distinguish between:

financial hardship,

temporary inability to pay,

viable debt requiring restructuring,

systematic non-compliance,

and large-scale strategic indebtedness.

A State capable of creating detailed debtor profiles is also capable of creating intelligent, proportionate and humane distinctions between different types of debt.

Collection should be a policy objective.

PERMANENT FINANCIAL REHABILITATION SHOULD ALSO BE A POLICY OBJECTIVE.

PUBLIC AND EUROPEAN MONEY MUST BE TRACEABLE TO REAL OUTCOMES

Greece has received an extraordinary volume of European resources through the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

By April 2026, Greece had received approximately €24.6 billion, equivalent to 68.5% of its total RRF allocation of approximately €35.95 billion. [13]

This money finances investment, infrastructure, digitalisation, energy, employment, health, business activity and other reforms.

These investments are real.

The purpose of transparency is not to deny that.

The democratic question is:

WHO ULTIMATELY BENEFITS, AND WHAT MEASURABLE CHANGE DOES PUBLIC INVESTMENT CREATE IN PEOPLE'S LIVES?

Greece already publishes, pursuant to European transparency rules, the list of the 100 largest final recipients of Recovery and Resilience Facility funding. [14]

That is an important beginning.

But citizens should also be able to understand:

• how geographically concentrated funding is;
• what proportion reaches small and medium-sized enterprises;
• how much reaches households directly or indirectly;
• what employment is created;
• what productivity gains are produced;
• what public-service improvements result;
• whether housing affordability improves;
• whether regional inequality falls;
• whether household disposable income improves;
• and whether the investment strengthens the country's long-term productive capacity.

Public money should be traceable through the entire chain:

SOURCE → RECIPIENT → PROJECT → RESULT → SOCIAL OUTCOME.

Absorption of funds is not, by itself, proof of success.

The final test is what those funds create.

WHAT WE DEMAND

1. AN IMMEDIATE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW OF POLITICAL-PARTY FINANCES

Within 90 days, the Hellenic Parliament should hold a dedicated public session examining the financial position of every political party receiving public funding.

For each party, a standardised report should disclose:

total outstanding borrowing;

principal and accrued interest;

annual repayments;

repayment schedules;

loan restructuring or refinancing;

significant modifications of lending terms;

security or assignments connected with state funding;

and compliance with agreed repayment arrangements.

The same reporting standard must apply to every party.

No government should audit only its opponents.

No opposition party should be exempt because it is not currently in power.

Political accountability must be institutional, not partisan.

2. STRENGTHEN THE INDEPENDENCE AND POWER OF POLITICAL-FINANCE OVERSIGHT

The existing Committee for MP and Political Party Auditing should be reviewed and strengthened so that political-finance oversight is operationally independent from the government and from the parliamentary majority of the day.

Its core rules, auditing standards, deadlines and publication obligations must be permanent.

It must have adequate professional auditing capacity and guaranteed resources.

Annual audits must be published within fixed statutory deadlines.

Serious findings should produce clear, predetermined and proportionate consequences.

Citizens should not have to depend on political willingness in order to obtain political transparency.

3. AN IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM ON ANY EXPANSION OF CITIZEN FINANCIAL SCORING THAT CREATES NEW PUBLIC PENALTIES OR RESTRICTIONS

Until Parliament has completed a full democratic, legal and social-impact review of the new Credit Assessment System, there should be no expansion of financial scoring into new areas of citizens' interaction with the State where a score could independently create a new penalty, exclusion, restriction or denial of an essential public service.

Before any such expansion, there must be:

• parliamentary scrutiny;

• a publicly available proportionality assessment;

• a Data Protection Impact Assessment where required;

• transparent disclosure of the categories of data being used;

• clear explanation of how assessments are produced;

• effective human review;

• a meaningful right to correction and appeal;

• independent testing for discriminatory or exclusionary effects;

• and specific safeguards for financially vulnerable citizens.

No person should suffer a significant public consequence solely because an opaque automated assessment has classified them as a financial risk.

Technology should improve administration.

It must not turn economic hardship into an algorithmic presumption of guilt.

4. A LEGAL PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY IN HOUSEHOLD DEBT ENFORCEMENT

Financial hardship and deliberate financial abuse must be treated differently.

Debt policy should distinguish between the millions of citizens with relatively small debts and the small number of debtors responsible for extremely large concentrations of overdue liabilities.

For vulnerable or viable debtors, the objective should include rehabilitation and sustainable repayment.

For systematic large-scale evasion and strategic non-compliance, enforcement should remain strong.

A modern State should be capable of being both effective and proportionate.

5. A NATIONAL WELLBEING AND HOUSEHOLD RESILIENCE SCORE

Greece should establish by law a permanent National Wellbeing and Household Resilience Score, supported by a detailed public dashboard and produced with full methodological independence.

The framework should measure, at minimum:

• real median disposable household income;
• purchasing power;
• housing affordability;
• housing-cost overburden;
• ability to meet unexpected necessary expenses;
• household debt and debt-servicing burden;
• poverty and material deprivation;
• access to healthcare;
• access to mental-health services;
• employment quality and income security;
• household savings;
• energy and food affordability;
• demographic sustainability;
• regional inequality;
• ability of young adults to form independent households;
• subjective ability to make ends meet;
• and overall life satisfaction.

The national headline score should never conceal the underlying indicators.

If one indicator improves while housing, healthcare access or financial resilience collapses, citizens must be able to see it.

The methodology should not be rewritten every time the government changes.

6. A MANDATORY CITIZEN IMPACT AND PROPORTIONALITY ASSESSMENT

Every major new policy concerning:

taxation,

social-security contributions,

debt enforcement,

credit assessment,

housing,

energy costs,

mandatory financial compliance,

or other significant financial obligations imposed on households,

should be accompanied by a publicly available Citizen Impact Assessment before implementation.

Government should have to answer:

Who will bear the cost?

How much will it cost them?

What percentage of the affected population is already financially vulnerable?

How will disposable income be affected?

Could the same public objective be achieved through a less burdensome intervention?

What protections will exist?

And after implementation:

Did the measure produce the promised result?

A policy should not be considered successful simply because it collected more revenue.

Its consequences for society must also be measured.

7. FULL TRACEABILITY OF PUBLIC AND EUROPEAN INVESTMENT

Major national and European investment programmes should disclose not only how much money was allocated or absorbed, but where it ultimately went and what measurable outcomes were produced.

Public reporting should include, where legally possible:

final beneficiaries;

funding concentration;

geographic distribution;

SME participation;

employment created;

private investment mobilised;

productivity effects;

and measurable social outcomes.

Citizens finance the State and collectively bear its risks.

They are therefore entitled to understand where public capital goes and what it creates.

8. PERMANENT INSTITUTIONS THAT SURVIVE GOVERNMENTS

Greece does not only need political stability.

It needs institutional stability.

Governments are temporary.

The State is permanent.

Core institutions responsible for statistics, auditing, justice, public-money oversight, data protection, transparency and citizen rights must function independently of the party currently holding executive power.

Their central operating rules should not be easily rewritten for short-term political convenience.

Major changes to fundamental transparency and accountability safeguards should require enhanced parliamentary consensus, public consultation and clear justification.

THE STATE MUST REMAIN LARGER THAN THE GOVERNMENT.

9. AN ANNUAL “STATE OF THE CITIZEN” DEBATE IN PARLIAMENT

Once every year, the Hellenic Parliament should hold a dedicated public debate based on independently verified indicators examining:

household wellbeing;

real purchasing power;

housing;

healthcare access;

private debt;

poverty;

public investment outcomes;

political-party finances;

institutional performance;

and public accountability.

The Government should be required to state:

what improved;

what deteriorated;

which measurable targets were missed;

why they were missed;

and what corrective action will follow.

This framework must apply to every government.

Citizens should be able to compare different governments using the same measurements over time.

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR A STATE WITHOUT RULES

We are not asking the State to stop collecting lawful taxes.

We are not asking for fraud to be tolerated.

We are not asking banks to ignore financial risk.

We are not asking for all private debts to be cancelled.

We are not claiming that every Greek household is poor.

We are not claiming that every problem in Greece is caused by one government or one political party.

And we are not asking political parties to be prohibited from governing simply because they carry debt.

We are asking for something more fundamental:

THE RULES MUST APPLY IN BOTH DIRECTIONS.

If citizens must demonstrate financial responsibility, political parties must demonstrate financial transparency.

If citizens are assessed, institutions must also be assessed.

If citizens are expected to account for what they owe, political organisations receiving public funding must account clearly for what they owe.

If the State measures the risk a citizen represents to the financial system, it must also measure the pressure that the economic system places on the citizen.

If European money enters Greece in the name of recovery and resilience, citizens must be able to see whether it produced recovery and resilience in their lives.

And when official statistics show that a large part of the population is already financially vulnerable, the State should not respond reflexively with ever more surveillance, scoring and pressure.

It should first ask whether the intervention is necessary.

Whether it is proportionate.

Whether it distinguishes hardship from abuse.

Whether a less burdensome alternative exists.

And whether it actually improves the long-term health of society.

THE PRINCIPLE IS SIMPLE

A citizen is not merely a taxpayer.

A citizen is not merely a debtor.

A citizen is not merely a borrower.

A citizen is not merely a consumer.

A citizen is not merely a data profile.

And a citizen is not merely a source of public revenue.

The purpose of a democratic State is not only to remain solvent.

It is to create the conditions in which its people can live with dignity, participate in society, create, work, raise families, take risks, build businesses and plan a future.

Creditworthiness asks:

“Can the citizen meet their obligations to the system?”

Democratic accountability asks:

“Does the system meet its obligations to the citizen?”

A functioning democracy must be willing to answer both.

WE DEMAND:

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT FINANCIAL PERSECUTION.

ACCOUNTABILITY WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS FOR POLITICAL POWER.

TRANSPARENCY FROM THE CITIZEN ALL THE WAY TO THE STATE.

PUBLIC INVESTMENT WHOSE BENEFICIARIES AND RESULTS CAN BE TRACED.

INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS THAT SURVIVE GOVERNMENTS.

A NATIONAL WELLBEING SCORE THAT MEASURES WHAT LIFE IN GREECE ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE AND WHAT IT ACTUALLY COSTS.

AND A STATE THAT TREATS ITS CITIZENS AS THE PEOPLE IT EXISTS TO SERVE — NOT AS PERMANENT SUSPECTS IT EXISTS TO CONTROL.

IF THE STATE CAN SCORE CITIZENS, CITIZENS MUST BE ABLE TO AUDIT THE STATE.

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OFFICIAL SOURCES AND DOCUMENTATION
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[1] HELLENIC MINISTRY OF NATIONAL ECONOMY AND FINANCE
“Two New Digital Tools: Private Debt Monitoring Registry & Credit Assessment System”
18 June 2026.
Official Ministry announcement.
Evidence supported: collection and cross-checking of public-sector data; processing and production of creditworthiness ratings; exchange of ratings; citizen access and correction rights.
Source: minfin.gov.gr

[2] BANK OF GREECE
“Official Launch of the Central Credit Register (CCR)”
23 January 2026.
Evidence supported: operation of the CCR; collection of granular credit/payment-history data; borrower credit reports; use in creditworthiness/risk assessment.
Source: bankofgreece.gr / ccr.bankofgreece.gr

[3] HELLENIC PARLIAMENT — CONSTITUTION OF GREECE
Article 29(2).
Evidence supported: entitlement of political parties to State financial support; constitutional requirement for guarantees of transparency in political-party financial management; auditing of electoral expenses by a special body with participation of senior magistrates.
Source: hellenicparliament.gr

[4] HELLENIC PARLIAMENT
Committee for MP and Political Party Auditing.
Evidence supported: existing parliamentary mechanism responsible for auditing party finances and compliance with political-financing legislation.
Source: hellenicparliament.gr

[5] EUROPEAN COMMISSION
2026 Rule of Law Report — Country Chapter on the Rule of Law Situation in Greece.
17 July 2026.
Evidence supported: concerns regarding transparency and implementation of political-party funding rules; limited number of prosecutions and final judgments including high-level corruption; limited progress on the lobbying framework; continuing challenges including frequent legislative changes.
Source: commission.europa.eu

[6] HELLENIC STATISTICAL AUTHORITY — ELSTAT
“Severe Material and Social Deprivation and Living Conditions, 2025”
Released 19 March 2026.
Evidence supported:
14.9% severe material and social deprivation;
15.9% among children ≤17;
50.5% inability to face unexpected expenses;
41.8% difficulty with mortgage/rent, utilities or loan payments;
18.1% inability to keep home adequately warm/cold;
46.6% inability to afford one week of holiday.
Source: statistics.gr

[7] HELLENIC STATISTICAL AUTHORITY — ELSTAT
“Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion — 2025 Survey on Income and Living Conditions”
19 March 2026.
Evidence supported: 27.5% of the population, approximately 2.797 million people, at risk of poverty or social exclusion; increase from 26.9% in the previous survey.
Source: statistics.gr

[8] EUROSTAT
“Subjective poverty rate falls to 17.4% in 2024”
23 October 2025.
Evidence supported: Greece recorded a subjective-poverty rate of 66.8%, the highest in the European Union.
Dataset: ilc_sbjp01.
Source: ec.europa.eu/eurostat

[9] EUROPEAN COMMISSION
2026 Country Report — Greece.
Evidence supported: housing costs exceeded 40% of disposable household income for 28.9% of Greece's population compared with 8.2% in the EU; Commission assessment that housing affordability has deteriorated.
Source: economy-finance.ec.europa.eu

[10] EUROSTAT
“3.6% experience unmet needs for medical care in 2024”
20 August 2025.
Evidence supported: 21.9% of people in Greece aged 16+ who reported needing medical care reported unmet needs due to cost, waiting time or distance; highest share in the EU; EU average 3.6%.
Dataset: hlth_silc_08b.
Source: ec.europa.eu/eurostat

[11] INDEPENDENT AUTHORITY FOR PUBLIC REVENUE — AADE
Annual Report 2025 and Activity Planning for 2026.
Published March/April 2026.
Evidence supported:
€113.8587 billion total overdue balance as of 1 January 2026;
3,713,275 overdue debtors;
77.5% of debtors owed less than €3,000 and represented 1.3% of total overdue debt;
0.7% owed more than €300,000 and represented 82.5% of total overdue debt.
Source: aade.gr

[12] e-EFKA / CENTRE FOR THE COLLECTION OF SOCIAL SECURITY DEBT — KEAO
Second Quarterly Progress Report 2026, April–June 2026.
Evidence supported:
€52.425 billion current outstanding balance at 30 June 2026;
69.73% of debtors owed up to €15,000;
84.47% owed up to €30,000;
3,029 debtors owing more than €1 million represented 24.68% of outstanding debt.
Source: e-efka.gov.gr

[13] GREECE 2.0 — NATIONAL RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE PLAN
“Commission disburses €1.18 billion to Greece under NextGenerationEU”
23 April 2026.
Evidence supported: cumulative RRF disbursements to Greece reached €24.6 billion, or 68.5% of its total €35.95 billion allocation.
Official Greek Recovery and Resilience Plan source.
Source: greece20.gov.gr

[14] GREECE 2.0 — NATIONAL RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE PLAN
“List of Top 100 Final Recipients of RRF Funds”
Updated June 2026.
Evidence supported: Greece publishes the 100 final recipients with the highest RRF funding, pursuant to European transparency requirements.
Source: greece20.gov.gr