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As far as disability spending is concerned, our country is unfortunately among the tails of Europe. Between 2010 and 2017, with the cost-cutting for social protection of disability amounting to 28%, the country eventually went from an inadequate, irrational and medically centralised social protection system to a shrinking benefits system. This contraction has been the result of horizontal cuts to pensions and a reduction in invalidity pension beneficiaries. Ranking all countries on the basis of their share of GDP for disability protection in a total of 35 states, Greece unfortunately ranks 29th. It is worth mentioning, however, that, following the hard and continuous efforts of the ESA, there was no benefit cut, even though it was a memorandum requirement.
Overall speaking, spending on social protection, in light of the ongoing austerity policies of the last decade, has been treated as a fiscal burden and not as part of the solution to an exit from the crisis. The contraction of the social state, with a reduction of 1/4 of social protection expenditure between 2009 and 2017, was mainly based on myths that want Greece to spend a lot in this area, while a comparison of the actual data in the EU countries reveals the insubsinable nature of these objections. It must be noted that the expenditure on social protection in Greece, by whatever indicator, was and is lower than the European instrument.
