Plan in progress The government will support permanent mortgage borrowersin line with the Spanish model outlined on Saturday morning by Deputy Interior Minister Stelios Petsas, reaffirming the corresponding report published yesterday by “K”.

In an interview with SKAI, Mr. Petsas mentioned the main elements of the plan, namely:

• Loan extension
• 40%-50% dose reduction
• Interest rate freeze
• installation for 5 years
• Annual income 25,000 (2,000 euros per month)

What is the Spanish model?

• Extending the term of home loans to reduce the monthly payment to 40% of monthly income.

• An interest rate freeze at the Euribor level for those households that are considered vulnerable.

The model was discussed at yesterday’s meeting of Finance Minister Christos Staikouras with the heads of systemically important banks and the board of the Hellenic Banking Union. The meeting took place at the call of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to look for solutions and exhaust all options for permanent borrowers.

According to the information, Mr. Staikouras urged the banks to be sensitive to the needs of society and come back with proposals after studying their financial data and evaluating the practices applied abroad.

The Spanish government’s agreement with the country’s banks concerns more than a million households to service their mortgages, which extends their repayment period. At the same time, banks will introduce a system of preferential treatment and support for vulnerable families, that is, with an annual income of up to 25,200 euros.

These families will be able to restructure their mortgages at lower interest rates during a five-year grace period. The Spanish Ministry of Finance announced the measures, without mentioning, however, the potential costs that they entail for financial institutions, as well as whether banks will need to create additional reserves against problem loans.

It should be noted that the latest data show that the NPLs of Spanish banks are at a historically low level, only 3.86% of the total, compared to 7%-8%, which is the average of the four systemically important banks in our country. country based on 9 months of data.

“thorns”

The administrations of the Greek banks committed themselves to exploring alternative possibilities, but stressing that the Spanish model could not work in Greece, since, as they stressed, most of the home loans in our country had already been settled.

Potential re-regulation will push these loans into the red and effectively render them non-performing. Indeed, according to the data processed by the banks, most mortgages that are currently issued with a floating interest rate will have a small burden from the growth of the uribor, due to the fact that these are mostly old loans on which the interest has expired, and therefore they are not particularly burdened by rising interest rates.

In the borrower relief scenarios that will be considered, it is possible that the issue of state support will also be raised, which is currently officially rejected by the Ministry of Finance, citing the narrow budget margin as the main argument, but also the complexity of the new package of measures to obtain the approval of institutions and especially the European Commission.

In addition, Mr. Staikouras, speaking on Parapolitics radio and answering the question whether there will be regulation to support borrowers, said that all interventions are assessed taking into account the existing fiscal space, since the fiscal flexibility of the past does not exist. He cited the example of Spain to point out that there would be no tax costs in the future, but cost transfers to borrowers. The next meeting is scheduled for next week, after banks determine the amount of loans that economically weaker households should have.