There is a flaw in public administration that survives stubbornly, however many internal procedure manuals are drawn up and however many assurances are given, because it works as an inversion of common sense. In the welfare state, as two successive Audit Office reports published within just seven months make vividly clear, and as Politis reported on Thursday, the rule seems to be “pay out first and, if we remember a few years later, check.”
The findings are embarrassing at the very least, less for the scale of the waste than for the institutional apathy they expose. Pre-approvals for the guaranteed minimum income that turn into decades of payments without a final decision. Hundreds of thousands of euros ending up in the accounts of citizens who own property worth hundreds of thousands, or of beneficiaries who never went through a medical disability assessment. A system so bureaucratically numb and directionless that it kept paying an allowance for seven years for a child who had died, even though the mother herself had submitted the death certificate.
The responsible deputy ministry’s answer is that these are “sins of the past”, corrected from 2023 onwards, in an effort to deflect from present-day responsibility. That answer, however, runs up against the 2026 figures themselves, which show that dozens of pre-approvals are still pending after years, while hundreds of disability assessments remain up in the air, all while the money keeps flowing.
No one disputes that pre-approval is a necessary humanitarian tool, ensuring that vulnerable citizens are not left to fend for themselves at the mercy of bureaucracy. When the exception becomes the norm for years on end, however, social sensitivity turns into administrative irresponsibility. Worst of all, the welfare state itself is undermined, as precious resources are diverted from those who genuinely need them.
Now the state is preparing to open the umbrella of disability benefits even wider, adding 5,000 new beneficiaries and €106 million to the budget over the next three years. The intention is undoubtedly positive. The question remains, however, whether the state is building this expansion of benefits on solid foundations of oversight and functionality, or simply opening wider the tap through which public money flows. In social policy, good intentions without strict supervision amount to mismanagement rather than solidarity.
This editorial was originally published in Greek in Politis.
