Published here in Greek on 18 April 2015
The new [then deputy] minister of infrastructure kept flattering those fellow citizens still naively believing in the abolition of tolls (and bailouts) by a single-clause law.
Even an inquiry committee to investigate the alleged scandal could be set up, who knows. For the time being, the government's only achievement on the matter is the reappearance of protesters enforcing free passage with lunchtime daytrips, especially as the weather improves - the struggle being continued in the next hours at seaside ouzo-restaurants (damn' crisis).
This whole anti-toll movement has a very interesting history. To many, it is identified with Syriza - and justly so. Several of today's MPs used to lead the dynamic actions after 2010. A separate "Won't Pay" movement's support got almost wholly absorbed by the new strong left-wing pole in the repeat election of 2012.
Nevertheless, the 2008 pioneer was not a Syriza member, not back then at least. The Pasok man from Kalavryta, a former MP and prefect, appeared almost out of nowhere, preparing the ground. By invoking an outdated European directive, early refuseniks claimed that no toll should be levied on the Corinth-Patras route.
Shortly thereafter, the concession agreement - passed by a large majority in Parliament - incorporated the existing State tolls to the funding scheme of the new motorway to be constructed. In exactly the same way (via a parliamentary process studied since 2002 and hardly a novel one), the State's operating rights on four other motorways were transferred at the same time (2007-2008) to private special-purpose companies.
This whole process didn't give rise to a serious left-wing and/or patriotic reaction. Local MPs and local authority leaders were almost unanimously happy that the motorways would be "made". People trusted the private sector, judging from the first generation of such projects. Construction progressed fast, service and safety were improving - and tolls were being paid without complaints. International finance parties acknowledged the existence of a "toll culture" in the country.
A driver wouldn't examine, for example, what exactly he was paying for through the State-run tolls, for almost half a century. "Children's fares" were an open secret, as were other frauds, part of an unhealthy management reality and - as revealed later by the State's auditor Mr Rakintzis - bad corporate governance.
There was no crisis in 2008, Greeks didn't sense that their incomes were being reduced or that they would have to be economical. Therefore, the rates of 0.04 EUR per kilometre (plus inflation and VAT) didn't appear excessive. Nor were they, compared to the rest of Europe, with which we were anyway converging in terms of purchasing power.
Naturally, the gradual abolition of an all-purpose redistributional fund - and its replacement by bank accounts financing specific projects under clear conditions - was not a welcome development for everyone. How could one support, however, a non-transparent and outdated model.
The golden opportunity arose in 2009 when, with the first dark clouds amassing over the horizon of the Greek economy, Pasok candidates did not hesitate - despite having themselves voted for the concession agreements - to promise cheaper tolls.
And when recession started, from 2010 onwards, to show its teeth, the torch was passed on to the leftists who, taking advantage of the Pasoki's inability to make good on their promises, simply raised hell.
Local leaders joined too, asking for exemptions, jumping on the bandwagon and highlighting certain local shortcomings of the toll structure, who for its biggest part nevertheless achieves an optimal balance between construction cost and the required distance-based proportionality.
Despite commitments made in late 2013 (as concession agreements were amended) to correct these local issues, the reactions have since been provoked as well by the new political heroes: regional prefects. This is now a cross-party movement: the person who introduced the original concession agreements to Parliament (under the New Democrats) now calls tolls a plague!
Social envy is a key ingredient of reactions. It is clear that the liquidity of concession projects is being eyed-upon by public bodies which, for various reasons, cannot achieve something comparable. A revival of the infamous bucket-fund would probably be convenient for those agencies.
Abolition of tolls would mean the end of concession projects, but this minor detail is overlooked for now. A "smarter" variation calls for maintaining the contracts until the end of construction and then write these debts "on the snow". A less obvious, but equally important, detail is the need to maintain the motorways themselves, in whichever way their construction would be funded. Some have started labelling the current maintenance regime a luxury, as if "using a dog leash made of sausages" - despite the admittedly overwhelming improvement in quality during the concession years.
A better dog metaphor would be the Dalmatians, purchased in huge quantities thanks to the namesake movie - only to be abandoned as soon as kids got bored of them. In 2005 everybody asked for "motorways everywhere", far beyond the Greece 2010 strategic plan (itself impossible to materialize in full, due to the crisis). Karpenisi, for example [a small town in mountainous central Greece], would be at the intersection of two major highways - one along the Megdovas river and another across the Veloukhi mountain. Populists (sometimes sons of modernist political families) currently engaging in toll-bashing had better tell the public how they intend to fund the projects - not the irrational ones they still promise or adopt, but the ones currently being built with a thousand hurdles and struggling to stay decent.
The new [then deputy] minister of infrastructure kept flattering those fellow citizens still naively believing in the abolition of tolls (and bailouts) by a single-clause law.
Even an inquiry committee to investigate the alleged scandal could be set up, who knows. For the time being, the government's only achievement on the matter is the reappearance of protesters enforcing free passage with lunchtime daytrips, especially as the weather improves - the struggle being continued in the next hours at seaside ouzo-restaurants (damn' crisis).
This whole anti-toll movement has a very interesting history. To many, it is identified with Syriza - and justly so. Several of today's MPs used to lead the dynamic actions after 2010. A separate "Won't Pay" movement's support got almost wholly absorbed by the new strong left-wing pole in the repeat election of 2012.
Nevertheless, the 2008 pioneer was not a Syriza member, not back then at least. The Pasok man from Kalavryta, a former MP and prefect, appeared almost out of nowhere, preparing the ground. By invoking an outdated European directive, early refuseniks claimed that no toll should be levied on the Corinth-Patras route.
Shortly thereafter, the concession agreement - passed by a large majority in Parliament - incorporated the existing State tolls to the funding scheme of the new motorway to be constructed. In exactly the same way (via a parliamentary process studied since 2002 and hardly a novel one), the State's operating rights on four other motorways were transferred at the same time (2007-2008) to private special-purpose companies.
This whole process didn't give rise to a serious left-wing and/or patriotic reaction. Local MPs and local authority leaders were almost unanimously happy that the motorways would be "made". People trusted the private sector, judging from the first generation of such projects. Construction progressed fast, service and safety were improving - and tolls were being paid without complaints. International finance parties acknowledged the existence of a "toll culture" in the country.
A driver wouldn't examine, for example, what exactly he was paying for through the State-run tolls, for almost half a century. "Children's fares" were an open secret, as were other frauds, part of an unhealthy management reality and - as revealed later by the State's auditor Mr Rakintzis - bad corporate governance.
There was no crisis in 2008, Greeks didn't sense that their incomes were being reduced or that they would have to be economical. Therefore, the rates of 0.04 EUR per kilometre (plus inflation and VAT) didn't appear excessive. Nor were they, compared to the rest of Europe, with which we were anyway converging in terms of purchasing power.
Naturally, the gradual abolition of an all-purpose redistributional fund - and its replacement by bank accounts financing specific projects under clear conditions - was not a welcome development for everyone. How could one support, however, a non-transparent and outdated model.
The golden opportunity arose in 2009 when, with the first dark clouds amassing over the horizon of the Greek economy, Pasok candidates did not hesitate - despite having themselves voted for the concession agreements - to promise cheaper tolls.
And when recession started, from 2010 onwards, to show its teeth, the torch was passed on to the leftists who, taking advantage of the Pasoki's inability to make good on their promises, simply raised hell.
Local leaders joined too, asking for exemptions, jumping on the bandwagon and highlighting certain local shortcomings of the toll structure, who for its biggest part nevertheless achieves an optimal balance between construction cost and the required distance-based proportionality.
Despite commitments made in late 2013 (as concession agreements were amended) to correct these local issues, the reactions have since been provoked as well by the new political heroes: regional prefects. This is now a cross-party movement: the person who introduced the original concession agreements to Parliament (under the New Democrats) now calls tolls a plague!
Social envy is a key ingredient of reactions. It is clear that the liquidity of concession projects is being eyed-upon by public bodies which, for various reasons, cannot achieve something comparable. A revival of the infamous bucket-fund would probably be convenient for those agencies.
Abolition of tolls would mean the end of concession projects, but this minor detail is overlooked for now. A "smarter" variation calls for maintaining the contracts until the end of construction and then write these debts "on the snow". A less obvious, but equally important, detail is the need to maintain the motorways themselves, in whichever way their construction would be funded. Some have started labelling the current maintenance regime a luxury, as if "using a dog leash made of sausages" - despite the admittedly overwhelming improvement in quality during the concession years.
A better dog metaphor would be the Dalmatians, purchased in huge quantities thanks to the namesake movie - only to be abandoned as soon as kids got bored of them. In 2005 everybody asked for "motorways everywhere", far beyond the Greece 2010 strategic plan (itself impossible to materialize in full, due to the crisis). Karpenisi, for example [a small town in mountainous central Greece], would be at the intersection of two major highways - one along the Megdovas river and another across the Veloukhi mountain. Populists (sometimes sons of modernist political families) currently engaging in toll-bashing had better tell the public how they intend to fund the projects - not the irrational ones they still promise or adopt, but the ones currently being built with a thousand hurdles and struggling to stay decent.
