Solidarity and the Welfare State in Greece

Abstract

During the years preceding the financial and
fiscal crisis, Greece’s welfare state had been mainly
extending provisions in order to serve the political
patronage system built after regime change in 1974. This
system reached its limits as the number of active insurance
contributions given by the working population was
gradually reducing while the number of inactive members
(pensioners) was increasing at an exponential rate.
Because of this situation, after the outbreak of the
financial crisis, the "obvious" concepts of social security
and solidarity were in dispute and are currently in a
process of redefinition. Undoubtedly, insurance is a way of
producing solidarity and nowadays redistribution methods
are put into question. At this point we note that the
proposals of the Left proved unable to address the viability
problem of the social security system and as a result could
not prevent the appearance of “social exclusion”. This is
evidenced by the fact that in Greece during the economic
downturn, not only are the vulnerable affected but also the
middle classes. These results stem from the requirements
of the Medium Term Fiscal Strategy Programme 2013-
2016, signed by the Greek government, the IMF and the
EU, that proposed a selective welfare state which reduces
wastage by the extreme reduction in the Health and
Education services. One main aspect of the welfare state is
the existence of solidarity with social content but how can
this be implemented when solidarity becomes a form of
charity? Does the introduction of a revolutionary tax plan
which aims at increasing the development rates provide a
sustainable solution to this problem? The purpose of this
article is to investigate the transformation of the concept of
solidarity and the formulation of policies that will make
the welfare state in Greece viable while not restricting
social goods.