Greece tackles high prices on basic food products

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Greece’s centre-right government has announced new measures to tackle the high prices of food, household and baby products, accusing multinational companies of imposing unjustifiably high prices on the country’s consumers.

Some of the measures include price cuts on basic items such as fruit and vegetables, toothpaste, shampoo and home cleaning products.

One of the government’s initiatives will be to impose a cap on the gross profit margin of companies producing baby milk powder.

The 7% profit cap on baby formula will happen in March and follows a series of similar initiatives over the past two years for basic items.

Food inflation was just below 9% at the end of 2023 in the country.

The government expects food inflation to slow down in the coming months. 

According to the people asked by Euronews Greek in a public market in central Athens, people remain sceptical about whether the measures will reverse the price hikes of the last period. One of them said: “Listen, I’m an old woman, I saw a lot. When the prices rose, they never fell again.”

The Greek government says the issue of the high prices is connected with the international crisis, to which parties of the Greek opposition have reacted by condemning the government for mockery.

“The imported precision is the number one problem for the whole country. And by extension the first priority of the government,” said government spokesman Paul Marinakis. “The government has already proceeded with a series of permanent and targeted interventions that will help them to deal with the high prices.”

The Greek government’s battle against ‘greedflation’

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis previously accused multinational companies and supermarket suppliers of taking advantage of high inflation to further hike prices.

“The battle to tame high prices and to impose more competition rules in favour of the consumer is a constant battle,” Mitsotakis told his ministers in a televised address, AP reported.

“We are constantly deploying new policy tools until everyone – especially the multinational companies – understands that Greece is not a banana republic and that ‘greedflation’ cannot be tolerated.”

Greek authorities in recent months have imposed fines of up to one million euros on major international companies who, they said, had violated government-imposed caps on profits.