On Thursday, the Parliamentary Committee on Audit called for a solution that would allow banks to send additional information required for auditing recipients of the EEE directly to the Deputy Ministry of Welfare. Audit.
As noted, under the authorization required by law that recipients must provide to the Deputy Ministry, banks are already sending specific information to the competent agency regarding the maximum account balance and the balance at the end of the month. However, during audits conducted by the Deputy Ministry, there are instances where further investigation is required.
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The Committee Chair, Zacharias Koulias, cited a case in which, due to the receipt of the subsidy for installing photovoltaic panels, the balance in the recipient’s bank account exceeded the €5,000 limit stipulated by law.
Until now, the procedure required the recipient to be notified so they could submit a bank statement within a specific time frame; otherwise the allowance is temporarily suspended; however, as lawmakers have complained, banks often charge recipients for issuing these statements.
“A practical solution must be found; the banks need to demonstrate their social responsibility and grant access to the Deputy Ministry,” Mr. Koulis demanded.
The representative of the Audit Office agreed with this position; the discussion had been initiated at a previous committee meeting—with the previous membership—based on a report from that office. As she noted, the Deputy Ministry must be given the tools it needs to serve citizens directly, so that they are not inconvenienced.
The Director General of the Deputy Ministry, Yiannis Nikolaidis, said that the most appropriate solution must be found, within the framework of proportionality. He noted that “we need to be able to perform our role automatically.” He clarified that the connection with banks has been in place for years for specific data. However, he said, there are cases where data is identified that may require further investigation.
“In these cases, we ask the client to provide us with account statements. We request—only in these cases—that, rather than going through the process of having them bring us paperwork that may be incomplete, we have the option of asking the banks to send us the statements as PDFs,” he said, noting that, in any case, the Agency ultimately receives them from the citizen themselves.
Moreover, he clarified that the authorization already granted by the benefit recipient, in accordance with the law, also covers this scenario.
The Director of the Welfare Benefits Management Service, Ioannis Vassiliadis, said that banks do not provide any additional information, while in the end, the Agency obtains it anyway.
When asked by DISY MP Giorgos Pamboridis to clarify whether the existing authorization covers the requirement for this information, Mr. Vassiliadis answered in the affirmative, noting that the authorization, which is mandatory for the recipient, provides access to any information from credit and other institutions regarding any asset.
“The way the Service currently obtains this information is on paper. We want to make the process digitally efficient. We don’t need information we won’t use,” he pointed out.
The Director General echoed this sentiment. As he said, “The authorization is comprehensive. The question is whether what we’re requesting electronically is proportionate to what we want to do. So far, it has been determined that these two pieces of information we’re given are sufficient,” he noted, referring to reservations expressed by the Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of Personal Data regarding whether the additional information is disproportionate. “Our position is that it is not,” he said.
