Cost of restoring the damage from storms ‘Daniel’ and ‘Elias’ will exceed 3.0 billion, Mitsotakis says

Athens, Greece.- Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday attended an event presenting the works for restoring the damage from the destructive 2023 storms ‘Daniel’ and ‘Elias’ at the Mouzaki Municipal Cinema Theatre. In a speech, he thanked the regional and municipal local authorities and all residents of Thessaly for their patience, stoicism and their determination to repair the “great destruction we all experienced”.
Mitsotakis stressed the importance of the restoration work, particularly highlighting its great cost: “The overall restoration of the damage done by ‘Daniel’ and ‘Elias’ will exceed three billion euros. Of this, 1.4 billion is only for road and rail infrastructure, and for the restoration of our schools. And I also want to stress that the effort that was made followed one central rule: that no citizen of Thessaly, no matter how geographically isolated they might be, should feel deprived of the care of the central state. This was why we did not, at any time, take technocratic cost-benefit approaches into account.”
The prime minister assured those present that the roads will be rebuilt better than before, so as to serve even the most remote corner of Thessaly, while raising a number of important points:
“Firstly, if the country was not in a good fiscal state, if our economy was not growing, if we had not recovered the investment grade, if the cost of financing the Hellenic Republic had not fallen, it would be highly doubtful whether we could find the funds that must be channelled into Thessaly from our national reserves.”
“A second observation: the Budget’s funds are obviously not bottomless. In order to be able to direct more funds into Thessaly, we had to deprive some other projects. It is important that you know this but the prioritisation we assign to Thessaly is absolutely essential given the extent of the damage you suffered from ‘Daniel’. And third, we don’t forget the European dimension of these funds.”