Greece’s government has caved in to demands by the Orthodox Church, affording tax breaks to monks, monasteries and members of the clergy despite crippling austerity measures hitting much of the rest of the country.
Under the surprise provision, retired monks earning annual pensions of up to €9,500 will be cleared of their obligation to file taxes while hundreds of monasteries, controlling priceless plots and ancient treasures, will be exempt from declaring their assets to the state.
For a nation still reeling from four years of brutal budget cuts, plus a new land levy that hikes taxation by as much as 75 per cent for Greece’s five million property holders, the freebie has enraged taxpayers and stoked social tension even further.
Next to the state, the church is the second biggest land owner in Greece. Its total worth is estimated at more than €1 billion with property holdings stretching from flats in fashionable districts in Athens and Salonika to 130,000 hectares of land, including prime seaside property along the capital’s riviera. It also holds a 1.5 per cent share in the National Bank of Greece, with one prelate retaining a permanent seat on the board plus annual pay of €24,000, according to Forbes Magazine.
“When the government hands out such benefits to one group it takes it away from others, usually the weakest,” says Stratos Safioleas, a social commentator. “Worse yet, it’s more than obvious that the government isn’t moving with these freebies out of respect for the clergy — rather, for the votes it hopes to grab in exchange.”
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National elections are due in 2016 but the spectre of snap elections as early as February has been raised recently with a flurry of opinion polls showing the country’s conservative-led government plummeting to all-time lows.
A series of defections have diminished its hold on power, and continued austerity has empowered the radical leftist Syriza party, vowing to tear up Greece’s stringent loan agreements with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Only two of 13 bishops comprising the Holy Synod, the church’s senior administrative body, have offered to give up their monthly salaries of €2,200 since the economy fell off the cliff in late 2009, wreaking the worst financial crisis there for decades. The church had denied reports of its purported wealth.