EU grant program remains idle

Not a single euro of subsidies has been granted yet to applicants who applied to join the Competitiveness program of the European Union-subsidized Partnership Agreement for the Development Framework, known in Greece as ESPA.

A year-and-a-half after the program's start it remains effectively inactive. Even the first batch of 1,372 successful applicants who recently entered the "Supporting Self-Employment of Tertiary Education Graduates" program will have to wait many months before they secure the grant they are entitled to.

As for those who applied to enter the "Upgrading Very Small and Small Enterprises" program last July, they will have to wait even longer, as the temporary recipients were not selected until very recently. They will now have to submit the so-called physical file with all the necessary documents pertaining to their investment (the deadline is September...