With two “last-minute” announcements, the year and the cycle of announcements of new benefits for 2024 comes to a close. In his speech before the new state budget was passed in parliament yesterday, in addition to announcing the measures for banks, Kyriakos Mitsotakis also outlined a small package of benefits (“exhausting to the fullest the fiscal margins,” he said), emphasizing 130.000 minimum wage earners who are exempt from paying for their medicines and will get them for free, and additionally 150,000 uniformed workers who will be recognized for the dangerousness of the services they provide.

54,000 more households will receive the social dividend, government spokesperson Stelios Petsas said to ANT1 TV on Tuesday.

Athens was fraught with demonstrations, again today, as pensioners, shipyard workers, disabled persons, teachers and supporters of imprisoned Kurds holding a hunger strike bore down on different ministries and parliament.