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What is your position on the avalanche of extra taxes that the government is imposing?

This continuous imposition of taxes has already gone beyond the Constitution itself. The government has revoked the right of ownership. When a person, who has an average or low income, inherits something from their parents or other relatives, they actually buy it a few times in their lives. This is a direct violation of the core principles of the right of ownership. At the same time, most of the taxes imposed on individuals and companies act as a means of cancelling trade and business too. In practice, it ends the sustainability of companies and investments and leads to the destruction of family and small businesses. The way in which the taxes on consumer goods are imposed, by the sharp increase in VAT to 23 per cent, deprives the poor Greek of the ability to survive and creates a new class of impoverished citizens.

Our proposal for economic policy is different. Our leader Antonis Samaras presented it in a clear way in Zappeion Hall and I believe it could really revive the market. Our programme provides for a reduction in tax rates, creating a more attractive environment for investors, it would circle the money several times, thereby creating better conditions for development of the real economy.

How do you think the public sector could and should be cut?

First, let me say that the main axis of our ideology and programme is a smaller and more efficient public sector. Shrinking the public sector, of course, is associated with staff reduction, but this should not happen without warning and in violation of labour relations. People who were employed in the public sector under certain conditions and purposes should not be thrown out just like that. Therefore, we would suggest that the labour reserve programme counteract the dismissals. It stipulated that for a certain period of time, the people working mainly in the wider public sector who would be unable to be productive would be taken out of work, they would cost much less to the state and ultimately they would retire.

The government completely misrepresented this programme, which the Troika adopted and endowed with a completely different content. In practice, it used the labour reserve as a mask behind which it wanted to hide its desire to fire civil servants. We believe that the labour reserve, in the form in which we proposed it, provides more income to the state, does not adversely affect the market movement and ensures the rights of employees, as far as possible under the present conditions. At the same time, we believe that the strict application of the scheme, 1 recruitment for 10 exits, which the Troika proposed, could give impressive results in reducing the number of civil servants within two years. As far as they are concerned, I would note that the PASOK government appointed 73 per cent of the current civil servants from 1981 to today.