1,898 secret discounts: citizens are invited to take the government at its word

The Greek buyer was offered a new religion – faith in the honesty and truthfulness of government. The reason for such an original cult was decision to abolish price controls, after which the authorities simultaneously reported: in supermarkets allegedly Almost two thousand goods fell in price.

The buyer cannot find out what exactly these goods are. The complete list is not published. He is invited not to check, but to BELIEVE!

No need to search for a product, no need to compare price tags, no need to demand a list. You just need to take it for granted: prices have been reduced, the state, under the strict leadership of the great, infallible, most honest Prime Minister in the world, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, controls everything.

And if you haven’t noticed this in your supermarket, it means you’re not a believer enough. You should once again walk between the shelves, carefully look at the price tags, repent of being too suspicious and not ask unnecessary questions. Otherwise, you may face a punishment worse than a fiery hyena: unscheduled notification from ΑΑΔΕ to myAADE with a request to urgently clarify the declaration for 2017.

Independent Market Monitoring and Consumer Protection Service announced that from April 1 to June 24 it recorded 1,898 price reductions in the basic price lists of suppliers. The figure is beautiful, respectable, almost solemn. But the list of goods, brands, chains and specific prices was not shown to citizens.

The buyer must be satisfied with the summary statistics. He is informed that somewhere in the system prices have been reduced on meat, coffee, cheese, olive oil, shampoo, cookies, drinks and pasta. Where exactly, by how much, in which store and whether the person at the checkout will see this decrease remains a matter of faith.

The Agency for Market Control and Consumer Protection and the Ministry of Development explain: The full list cannot be published because the database contains commercially sensitive data. There are product codes, barcodes, information about suppliers, purchase prices and change dates.

This explanation in itself is understandable. No one requires publishing the purchase price of a package of coffee, the agreement between the supplier and the chain, or the address of the warehouse refrigerator. But there is a fairly large gap between “give away the entire service base” and “fail to inform citizens which goods have become cheaper.” However, in a modern management system, for some reason this gap is always turns out to be classified.

I believe in 1,898 reductions

In fact, citizens are offered an economic creed: “I believe in price reductions, visible and invisible. Visible – in press releases. The invisible is on the supermarket shelves.” Hallelujah

According to the published summary data, the largest declines were recorded in the fresh meat category: 907 in beef and 209 in pork. Next come 120 reductions in packaged coffee, 63 in cheeses, 44 in olive oil, 35 in shampoos and hair products, 29 in cookies, 27 in drinks and 19 in pasta.

In total, another 445 reductions were counted in various other basic categories. The average decrease, according to Aρχή, was 5.94%.

But here comes the most important detail, which is easy to lose behind a beautiful number. These data relate to changes in price lists of suppliers and wholesalers. That is, we are not necessarily talking about the price that the buyer will see on the shelf.

Between the wholesale price list and the cash receipt lies a whole world: delivery, logistics, trade margins, conditions of a particular network, promotions, delivery times and, of course, the inevitable miracle of the disappearance of the discount on the way to the consumer.

Even supermarkets don’t know?

The scandal intensified after the words of the general director of the Greek Supermarket Union, Apostolos Petalas. On Mega News, he said that the retail chains themselves, according to him, do not know which product codes were included in the list of almost 2,000 reductions.

1,898 secret discounts: citizens are invited to take the government at its word pic.twitter.com/7POdr16MPJ

— Athens News (@russianathens) July 6, 2026

According to him, only the Ministry of Development has a complete picture. If this is indeed the case, the situation becomes almost ideal: the buyer does not know, the seller does not know, the public does not know, but the state knows and asks everyone not to doubt.

PΑΣΟΚ called this practice deliberate opacity and demanded that the list be published. The party rightly points out: if the government wants to present a reduction in prices as the result of its policies, it is obliged to give citizens the opportunity to see and verify this result.

The Ministry calls for responsible trust

Development Ministry sources deny the allegations. They say that Aρχή gave a fully justified explanation, and the opposition is trying to turn an everyday problem into a political conflict.

But prices in the supermarket are a household problem. It does not exist in television studios, ministerial files and press releases. It exists at the moment when the family puts meat, milk, coffee, butter into the basket and tries to understand why the total again looks like a bad joke.

The buyer does not ask to reveal state secrets. He wants to see a simple list: which product, where, when and by how much it has fallen in price. No supplier barcodes, no purchasing conditions, no commercial kitchen. Only what is relevant to him: whether the price tag in the store has changed.

In the meantime, the public is offered believe that the price reduction has occurred. Perhaps it really happened. Perhaps someone somewhere has already bought cheaper coffee and did not even understand what historical event they had experienced.

But if success cannot be shown, tested and repeated in a regular supermarket, it remains not an economic result, but an administrative legend. And in this legend, the citizen is assigned a modest role: to stand at the shelf, look at the price tag and believe that somewhere in the invisible world the numbers have already become better.

Amen

Based on materials from ProNews, Aρχή Ελέγχου της Αγοράς και Προστασίας του Καταναλωτή, PΑΣΟΚ and the Greek Ministry of Development.

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