Athens News
Friday October 21, 2005
Page A8

Horn on Greek pensions

Labour Minister Panos Panaylotopoulos met with America’s assistant secretary for children and family, Wade F. Horn, in Athens to discuss an array of issues concerning the hot topic of pensions and welfare.

The two men met at a gathering of OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) ministers in April. “[Panaylotopoulos] invited me to come to Greece to continue our conversation,” Horn told the Athens News following the October 10 meeting. Though short of detail, Horn said Greek officials discussed their efforts regarding pension and welfare reform. “Pretty much, I came and shared what it is they would be interested to hear from me and I asked about programmes that were of interest to us. We exchanged information and ideas . . . I see this as a first trip and hopefully not the last communication with persons in Greece.”

Horn said health and welfare ministry officials were particularly interested in learning more about his country’s “Welfare to Work” programme aimed at preventing people from abusing the system. “The difficulty we faced was that while nobody was getting rich on welfare, you could live on welfare and this created a disincentive towards work and marriage because basically what the welfare system said was that the way to get welfare is not to work and not to marry. And as long as you have a child, you get all sorts of benefits . . . We tried to shift welfare to encourage work.”

This article was published by the Athens News and written by Kathy Tzilivakis. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

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