ATHENS – Facing a tough re-election campaign this year, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that 2023 nonetheless will see decent health coverage for all and affordable housing and be better, despite the waning COVID-19 pandemic.

In his New Year’s message he also mentioned, after referring to the “imported inflation, which eats away at the average income,” about the “targeted efforts of the state to support society and the country’s economy during any unforeseen challenge” said the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency ANA-MPA.

He pointed out that on Jan. 1 there were measures that took effect, including the first pension increases in a dozen years after they were cut during a 2010-18 series of three international bailouts of 326 billion euros ($349.68 billion) that came with attached, harsh austerity measures aimed at the elderly, poor and middle-class.

The New Year saw the end of the solidarity tax in which money was taken out of pay checks to give to society’s most vulnerable, higher wages for state doctors and a coming April 1 increase in the minimum wage among other benefits the government is doling out, traditionally done during election time.