Article 1 
1. Greece shall put an end to the present excessive deficit situation as rapidly as possible and, at the latest, by the deadline of 2012. 2. The adjustment path towards the correction of the excessive deficit shall include a structural annual adjustment of at least 3½ percentage points of GDP in 2010 and 2011, and of at least 2½ percentage points of GDP in 2012. 3. The adjustment path referred to in paragraph 2 requires that the general government deficit does not exceed EUR 21 270 million in 2010, EUR 14 170 million in 2011 and EUR 7 360 million in 2012. 4. The adjustment path referred to in paragraph 2 requires that the annual change in the general government consolidated gross debt does not exceed EUR 21 760 million in 2010, EUR 14 680 million in 2011 and EUR 7 880 million in 2012. 5. The reduction of the deficit should be accelerated if the economic or budgetary conditions turn out better than currently expected.
Article 2 
In order to put an end to the situation of excessive deficit and comply with the adjustment path, Greece shall implement a number of fiscal consolidation measures, including those spelled out in the stability programme, and in particular: As outlined in the stability programme, and including the fiscal measures announced on 2 February 2010, Greece shall: (a) move 10 % of budgetary appropriations (other than wages and pensions) of the government’s departments in the budget for 2010 to a contingency reserve, pending a reallocation of appropriations among departments and the identification of spending programmes to be rationalised, leading to a sizeable permanent reduction in expenditure; (b) reduce the wage bill, including by freezing nominal wages in central government, local governments, state agencies, and other public institutions and implementing employment cuts; stop new recruitment in 2010 and cancel vacancies in the general government sector, including temporary contracts, in particular by not replacing permanent officials who retire; (c) cut special allowances paid to civil servants (including from off-budget accounts) leading to a cut in total remuneration in the general government sector, as a first step to improve the public wage system and streamline the public wage grid; (d) adopt nominal cuts in transfers paid by the social security, including through measures to restrict the indexation of benefits and entitlements; (e) implement a progressive tax scale for all sources of income and a horizontally unified treatment of income generated from labour and capital assets; (f) abrogate all exemptions and autonomous taxation provisions in the tax system, including income from special allowances paid to civil servants; (g) introduce presumptive taxation for self-employed persons; (h) introduce permanent levies on buildings and increase tax rates on real estate as compared to the rates as of 31 December 2009; (i) increase tobacco, alcohol and fuel excise duties, as compared to the rates as of 31 December 2009; (j) spell out in detail and implement, by the end of March 2010, the currently planned tax system reforms, while using the potential efficiency gains to further reduce the deficit. (a) to the extent that a number of risks associated with the deficit and debt ceilings provided in Article 1(3) and (4) materialise, Greece shall announce, in the report to be presented by 16 March 2010, measures additional to those provided in Article 2, Section A, to ensure that the 2010 budgetary target is met. Additional measures should focus on expenditure cuts (for example, cutting further current and capital expenditure, including by cancelling budgetary appropriations in the contingency reserve), but also include revenue-increasing measures (for example, increasing VAT revenue, establishing excise duties on luxury goods, including private cars, further increasing excise duties on energy products). The first assessment in this regard will be undertaken on the occasion of the first reporting on 16 March 2010. (a) adopt necessary reforms to significantly reduce the budgetary impact of ageing through a reform of the healthcare and pension systems, to be validated by the Economic Policy Committee peer-review process; in particular, adopt a parametric reform of the pension system which should ensure that the pension system is financially sustainable in the light of an ageing population; to this end, the reform should include lowering the upper limits on pensions, a progressive increase in the statutory retirement age of both women and men, and a change in the pension award formula to better reflect contributions paid throughout a person’s professional life and to improve generational fairness and rationalise the system of special allowances for low pensions; (b) reduce public sector employment in the general government by further cutting temporary contracts and implementing the rule of 1 recruitment for every 5 retirements; (c) reform the wage payment system for direct public administration employees, providing unified principles in setting and planning wages; streamlining the wage grid, while aiming at reducing the wage bill; wage bill savings at local level also need to be achieved; the new unified public sector wage grid has to be extended, but also refined, to apply to local governments and various other agencies and also ensure that the best performers are kept in the public sector; (d) enhance in earnest the fight against tax evasion and fraud (in particular, with regard to VAT, corporate income tax and the taxation system of the self-employed persons’ income), by also strengthening the legal enforcement of tax payments and using potential returns to further reduce the deficit; (e) pursue the modernisation of the tax administration, including by setting up a fully accountable tax collection department, which should set annual targets and operate within monitoring assessment systems of performance for tax offices; allocate the necessary resources in terms of high-level personnel, infrastructure and equipment support, managerial organisation and information-sharing systems; which should have sufficient safeguards against political interference; (f) spell out in detail the measures to be implemented in 2011 and 2012, in order to comply with the targets in the January 2010 update; (g) strengthen the position of the Ministry of Finance in relation to the line ministers in the course of the preparation of the annual budget legislation and reinforce its control mechanisms during budgetary execution; ensure, in addition, the effective implementation of programme-based budgeting; (h) pursue the reform of the General Accounting Office, including by setting up a fully accountable budget department, which should set multiannual expenditure targets and operate within monitoring assessment systems of performance; allocate the necessary resources in terms of high-level personnel, infrastructure and equipment support, managerial organisation and information-sharing systems; which should have sufficient safeguards against political interference; (i) adopt a medium-term budgetary framework, including binding spending ceilings based on a multiannual expenditure rule, and set up an independent fiscal policy agency, reporting publicly on the budgetary plans and execution of all public-spending entities of the general government on a timely basis; (j) within the medium-term budgetary framework referred to in point (i), announce without delay additional permanent expenditure-reducing measures for the medium-term; (k) enhance in earnest the fight against corruption in public administration, in particular in relation to public wages and allowances, public procurement, and tax assessment and collection; (l) take the necessary steps to avoid a reduction in the average maturity of public debt; (m) pursue the efforts to control factors other than net borrowing, which contribute to the change in debt levels. (a) in 2011 and 2012, implement adjustment measures of a permanent nature, mainly focused on current expenditure; more specifically, adopt expenditure cuts aiming at permanent savings in government consumption expenditure, including the wage bill, and social transfers, and reduce public employment; (b) within a medium-term budgetary framework, continue to implement with rigor the reform of the tax administration, while allocating potential revenues to deficit reduction; (c) strengthen the institutional mechanisms for providing reliable and plausible official budgetary forecasts that take into account available recent execution developments and trends; to this end, the official macroeconomic forecasts should be reviewed by external experts; the Commission services’ forecast shall be taken as a benchmark; (d) refrain from including in the budgetary targets deficit-reducing measures of a one-off nature; (e) within the medium-term budgetary framework, adopt additional permanent expenditure-reducing measures aimed at achieving the MTO of close to balance or in surplus.
Article 3 
In order to allow timely and effective revenue and expenditure control and the proper monitoring of fiscal developments, Greece should: (a) by 15 May 2010, adopt legislation that makes it compulsory to provide public reports on budgetary execution on a monthly basis with a delay of no more than 10 days after the month-end; (b) enforce the current legal obligation on social security funds and hospitals to publish annual official accounts and balance sheets; (c) further pursue the efforts to improve the collection and processing of general government data, notably by enhancing the control mechanisms of statistical authorities and the General Accounting Office and ensuring effective personal responsibility for cases of misreporting, in order to ensure the prompt supply of high-quality general government data required by Regulations (EC) No 2223/96, (EC) No 264/2000, (EC) No 1221/2002, (EC) No 501/2004, (EC) No 1222/2004, (EC) No 1161/2005, (EC) No 223/2009 ( 10 ) and (EC) No 479/2009; (d) cooperate with the Commission (Eurostat) so as to promptly agree on an action plan to tackle statistical, institutional and governance deficiencies; (e) cooperate with the Commission (Eurostat) and receive the appropriate resident technical assistance on the compilation of fiscal and other macroeconomic statistics.
Article 4 
1. Greece shall submit to the Council and the Commission and shall make public, by 16 March 2010 at the latest, a report spelling out the implementation calendar of the measures established pursuant to Article 2 of this Decision in order to achieve the 2010 budgetary targets, including, the necessary measures envisaged in Article 2, Section B. 2. Greece shall submit to the Council and the Commission and shall make public, by 15 May 2010 at the latest, a report outlining the policy measures to comply with this Decision. Greece shall thereafter submit and make such reports public on a quarterly basis. 3. The reports referred to in paragraph 2 should contain detailed information on: (a) concrete measures implemented by the date of the report in order to comply with this Decision, including their quantified budgetary impact; (b) concrete measures planned to be implemented after the date of the report in order to comply with this Decision, their implementation calendar and estimation of their budgetary impact; (c) the monthly State budget execution; (d) infra-annual budgetary implementation by social security, local government and extra budgetary funds; (e) government debt issuance and reimbursement; (f) permanent and temporary public sector employment developments; (g) government expenditure pending payment (cumulated arrears); (h) the financial situation in public undertakings and other public entities (such information should be provided on a yearly basis). 4. The Commission and the Council shall analyse the reports with a view to assessing Greece’s compliance with this Decision. In the context of these assessments, the Commission may indicate the measures needed to respect the adjustment path set by this Decision for the correction of the excessive deficit.
Article 5 
Greece shall take effective action to comply with this Decision by 15 May 2010.
Article 6 
This Decision shall take effect on the day of its notification.
Article 7 
This Decision is addressed to the Hellenic Republic.