In the recovery of 70 million euros from the astutedue to the political decisions issued during his ministry, “to deal with the excessive and unjustified increase in the number of amnoerifia and the excessive increase in demands on public grazing lands” the former Minister of Rural Development and Food (from 5.1.2021 to 7.2.2022) mentioned Spilios Libanos in the context of his testimony to the parliamentary inquiry committee, which is investigating the payment system of Community agricultural aid.
He emphasized, in fact, that in his attempt to face her “subsidy eating”, changing OPEKEPE, was slandered and threatened. In his testimony, he also spoke about the design of 6 reform interventions to clean up OPEKEPE, which was “trapped in a complex system of chronic pathologies”.
Specifically, he said that during his tenure, “we formulated and implemented a policy to transform the organization and establish transparency at all levels of operation, seeking to change the political paradigm and change the mindset in the industry.” He pointed out, in fact, that we achieved this without even the slightest risk of the payment of the 2021 money. I was the first minister who, with the guidance and support of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, “showed the benefit-eating and the long-term pathogenicity that existed in OPEKEPE” said Mr. Livanos and noted: “In my attempt to deal with the benefit-eating by changing OPEKEPE I was slandered, threatened – both me and my family – I was bullied, and in the end I was voted against”.
Enumerating and analyzing the relevant interventions of his term, Mr. Livanos stated:
– the effort to complete the Forest Grazing Plans,
– his conversion initiative OKAY to an Independent Authority,
-the use of OpenGov for IASC applications designed at that time,
– the announcement of “open” tenders for the selection of the Technical Advisor, which composed a set of critical reform interventions, which would restructure the Organization, and
– the ministerial decisions issued to deal with the excessive and unjustified increase in the number of declared amnoerifia, the excessive increase in claims on public pasture lands and the illegal transfer of rights from the national reserve, combined with the particularly increased controls throughout the country brought tangible results and the Greek public recovered a total of 70 million euros from the astute.
“In the space of one year, we formulated and implemented a policy to transform the Organization and establish transparency at all levels, without jeopardizing the payment of aid for the year 2021” adding that “unfortunately, this effort was not completed”.
Regarding the controls, he said that a total of 57,897 on-the-spot administrative controls and 35,312 controls with the telescopic method were carried out on 234,261 parcels of land yielding 34,403,754 euros in the year 2021, when the corresponding amounts collected by the ministry in previous years from controls were 6,392,409 euros in 2017, 7,956,830 euros in 2018, 6,963,231 euros in 2019 and 9,038,383 euros in 2020. “We have thus succeeded in giving a practical warning that the long-term sloppiness in the distribution of rural community resources will come to an end, and that a change of mentality will gradually be achieved in the controllers and the controlled through the example” he said, adding that “in order for there not to be any doubt as to my intentions, the controls from Etoloakarnania began, with the result of course that I bear the cost of my choices, as it turned out along the way”.
The “technical solution” and the reactions from the actors of Crete
On the subject of the “technical solution” he characteristically said: “Coming face to face with the numbers I was amazed, as it was more than obvious that there was a rapid and unnatural increase in the number of amnoerifia in specific livestock areas of the territory as well as a huge increase in the allocation of the National Reserve”, noting that in Crete there was a cumulative increase in declarations by 708.7%.
In order to immediately address the problem of false declarations and the false allocation of pastures and rights, and as radical changes were not possible at that time in view of the 2021 payments, Mr. Livanos said that he asked the heads of OPEKEPE, the official partners and the legal service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, to incorporate rules that would exclude as much as possible the distortion of the procedures, dealing with the methods that had been established. Thus, a network of three ministerial decisions emerged, “which really changed the context and immediately brought rich results as approximately 35,000,000 euros were saved”.
As Mr. Livanos mentioned, in fact, with the announcement and implementation of these sanitary legislative options, intense foci of reaction were created by persons who were affected, with the most typical example being his “proclamation” on posters, which had been posted publicly, as well as the organization of two rallies, where among the organizers were the well-known “farmers” of Crete, emphasizing that “of course these reactions are not they influenced our politics”.