The Greek government has announced plans to establish a special parliamentary committee to investigate a scandal involving European Union farm subsidies, reportedly amounting to tens of millions of euros. The scandal has already led to at least two ministers being under EU investigation.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis stated that the ruling conservative party intends to probe the operations of OPEKEPE, the Greek authority responsible for distributing common agricultural policy aid, covering the period from its founding in 1998 to the present. The goal is to uncover dysfunctions, identify issues, and promote transparency.
An EU prosecutor’s investigation has revealed widespread abuse of funds at OPEKEPE, which allocates around 2.5 billion euros annually to nearly 650,000 farmers. Prosecutors suspect that tens of millions of euros have been siphoned off illegally. The investigation’s timeline mostly overlaps with the current government, which took power in July 2019, but officials argue the fraud spans several decades.
Marinakis noted that Greece has paid more than 2.7 billion euros in fines over the past 30 years related to these issues. The ruling New Democracy party holds a comfortable majority in parliament, enabling it to establish the committee independently.
The scandal escalated last month when a former agriculture minister resigned after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office forwarded a case to Greek parliament involving alleged misappropriation of EU funds by two ex-ministers from Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government. Several junior ministers and senior officials also resigned amid the controversy.
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