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With the adoption of the Kalikratis law for the optimization of the central and municipal government, the government of George Papandreou set the beginning of one of the heaviest reforms of the current government - reducing the public sector and improving the services it offers. From this autumn starts the actual restructuring of public administration in Greece, which throughout the years build a reputation of one of the most inflated in terms of finances and inefficient in terms of  management among the countries within the eurozone. According to the Greek press publications the redistribution of posts and positions in the administration will lead to a layoff of public sector employees by almost 30%. This inevitably is expected to cause the anger of union forces in the country and will most likely lead to another typhoon of strikes and protests this winter.

The first step to disentangle the knot of the state administration was counting on civil servants in the country. This census proved to be necessary because when the members of the mission from the IMF, the ECB and European Commission submitted an inquiry for the number of servants in the Greek public administration, the of Minister Finance George Papakonstantinou could not answer. It turned out that nobody in the country knows exactly what is the specific number. After the census it turned out that the number is slightly less than 800 thousand for the whole country. Ministry of Interior and Public Administration has undertaken the creation of a new structure in which civil servants will be evaluated first and then spread horizontally according to the degree of specialization and sector. The vertical distribution will be divided into department, middle level management and top management.

Another ambition of the socialist government of PASOK is to introduce a common system for paying the salaries of civil servants. So far, each public institution itself determines the wages of its employees. According to verifications made by the Ministry of Finance, this has led to paradoxically large differences in the wages of professionals at the same level in the various ministries. Since the first of January 2011 monthly salaries of all government employees will be determined and paid only by the Ministry of Finance, according to the list drawn up after the census at the end of July this year. Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou is threatened, that not a single euro will be paid to employees whose names are not entered into the list.

The fundamental change in the way of subsidizing the ministries will provide guarantees for the execution of planned tasks for a period of three years, and each year there will be verification of the degree of feasibility. If the set in the initial program objectives are not met, the respective ministry will be deprived of the money for the unperformed projects. Government threatens that it will put an end to the arbitrary funding of questionable external consultants, who in past years have received substantial monetary compensation for the vague and in many cases unnecessary services.

The need for restructuring of public administration is imperative also according to the members of the supervisory triad of the mission of the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission. Nevertheless, the IMF representative for Europe Paul Thomson, who visited Athens in early August this year said a decision to cut the number of civil servants has ot been taken. The same also underlined the Minister Papakonstantinou at the press conference after the end of the second visit of the Commissioners, but apparently an effective reform of the public sector will not go without reducing the number of civil servants in Greece.