In a few days, the portal for out-of-territory voters to submit nominations will open under the new law passed two months ago, Interior Minister Thodoris Livanios announced during a topical question on the cost of a campaign for absentee voting. There will be provision for enhanced security guarantees, there will be new ways of authentication, anyone who does not have taxis credentials will be able to register with an upgraded security system and with the possibility of real-time identity verification, the Interior Minister said, noting that it is a central issue for democracy to convince as many Greeks as possible to exercise their right to vote abroad.
“There are hundreds of thousands of voters, who are abroad, who have the right to vote and therefore their participation in the election will make them more active members of the electoral body and of course to determine with their vote the fate of the country, regardless of which party they choose,” Thodoris Livanios said, stressing that the Ministry is at the disposal of each party for issues related to the electoral process and any information. He noted, however, that the model of the bipartisan committee can work and that is why as soon as the candidates’ portal is ready, the representatives of the parties will be invited by the Ministry of Interior to be informed and in turn inform their members abroad that the registration process has begun.
Responses to the “direct awards of 8,540.032.26 euros from the Ministry of Interior to the campaign for absentee voting, with the same companies calling and a fixed contractor,” asked SYRIZA MP George Karameros who observed that “in the case of the management of funds for absentee voting there is a recurring pattern and that is the award of public contracts with a recurring, closed invitation of the same economic operators and the constant predominance of one contractor, the same contractor in this case, which raises reasonable suspicions of sham competition and circumvention of the purpose of the procedure”.
“On the occasion of the closed invitations and direct awards of 8.5 million euros for the information campaign, why did the Ministry of Interior choose for three years to invite the same specific companies to implement the same essentially the same object, instead of proceeding with an open and international competitive procedure?”
“All election expenditure – you know this, because you are experienced and you were also a deputy governor in local government, who was in charge of the Northern Sector of Athens, if I remember correctly – all the activities, the expenditure of elections are carried out by direct contracting, for reasons that have been explained many, many times,” the Interior Minister said and recalled that Law 4648/2019 allows for the possibility of the excellent competitive bidding process for the assignment of voter information, “which has been done consistently, at least since 1994.” “Let me recall – for example – that in 2010 and 2014 and 2019, assignments for the information of voters were also made. What was a big difference? The big difference is that we had to do a piece of creative, which is about 300,000, and all the rest was not the contractor’s expense or procurement of services, but it was essentially the media plan of the campaign. And what was the media plan? It was to inform people, Greek citizens, who live all over the world. The majority, it was for advertising on social media, either on audiovisual production platforms, like YouTube, it was a small piece on channels that broadcast legally overseas, like ERT World, it was on expatriate media, either radio, print press, in Australia, in Germany, or on radios. So this whole piece, which was the vast majority of the expenditure, was a transfer payment essentially and was done to inform voters,” the Home Secretary said.
“In 2023, approaching the national elections, there was a new contract and the new completely new project, which was in 2024, and it was for both those inside and outside Greece, it was about 5 million euros of the expenditure for information, of which 1 million was inside Greece, about the same as the award in 2019, for example, and the rest was again abroad, mainly in media plan, in foreign media, as the media plan said. The first time, in 2021, it was an open call. Two companies participated, one was selected. In 2023, because it was related, to avoid getting paid again for creative for the media plan, the same company was chosen, and in 2024 again a small part was creative, video, etc. and the other part was communications, mainly overseas. I repeat that it was 1 million within Greece, a little over 1 million, and the other 4 or so, 3.5 million, was for overseas,” the Interior Minister said, noting that this was because to inform voters abroad in particular that there was a new way of exercising their right to vote, since there was the possibility of absentee voting.
