The decision extends the mandate of the committees responsible for monitoring expenditure and revenue across the central administration, updates their structure, and keeps them in place through 2027. It signals that tightening and rationalizing public spending remains a core priority for the country’s economic leadership.
In Greece, the spending review is a comprehensive evaluation of how each public agency manages its finances. It has become an integral part of the national fiscal framework, alongside the annual budget, the medium-term fiscal strategy, and yearly fiscal reports. Its purpose is to identify costs that can be cut, expenditures that require redirection, and areas where public funds are not yielding adequate results.
Energy costs have been a prominent example of where inefficiencies can be found. Ministries and state bodies are now examining their outlays on electricity, water, and heating, and rolling out interventions such as building energy upgrades, replacing old lighting systems with LED technology, and installing modern heating systems. These changes are driven not only by the need to reduce utility bills but also by broader efforts to modernize public infrastructure.
In other areas, the review has prompted agencies to reduce operating expenses through digitalization. Electronic document management systems have helped cut down on printing, consumables, and equipment maintenance.
Some services have adopted managed print solutions, lowering spending on toner and other supplies, while document digitization has reduced the volume of physical archives and the need for storage facilities. Officials involved in the process note that automation also frees up valuable staff time, creating indirect savings that are often more significant than the immediate budget cuts.
The review also reaches into regulatory and procedural frameworks. At the Ministry of Justice, for example, longstanding rules governing court interpreters and other categories of judicial expenditure are being re-examined. Many of these procedures have remained virtually unchanged for decades, generating costs that no longer reflect contemporary needs or practices.
Central to the government’s effort is govERP, a new digital platform under development that will eventually consolidate all budget-execution data from public entities. By providing more accurate and timely financial information, the system is expected to transform spending reviews from largely estimative exercises into analyses grounded in real-time data. The Ministry of Finance anticipates that this will make it easier to detect overspending early and to intervene before costs escalate.
