Best-ever receipts for Social Security Debt Collection Center
The Social Security Debt Collection Center (KEAO) achieved record revenues in 2024, reaching 2 billion euros in one year. This is the highest amount collected on an annual basis since the creation of KEAO in 2013.
Although social security debts keep expanding, as they have reached €50 billion, mainly due to additional fees and surcharges and not the creation of new debts, data show that KEAO services, with targeted actions, took the total collection of October-December 2024 to €511.8 million.
These collections for the fourth quarter are just below the quarterly record of €515 million achieved in the immediately preceding third quarter of the year. Overall, the annual collections for 2024 were over €1.96 billion. They represent an increase of approximately 15% compared to the previous year and constitute the highest annual collection in KEAO’s history. Therefore, from the start of the center’s operation to date, a total of over €13.2 billion has been collected.
A significant part of the collections came from debt arrangements. It is indicative that, at the end of December 2024, active and completed arrangements at KEAO reached a total of 1,047,535 for debts amounting to €8.26 billion.
However, collections outside of regulation are also important, as the center seeks to strengthen debt collection procedures through the identification and combating of chronic problems in the collection system and by taking measures against systematic avoidance of payment of contributions, in order to ensure equal treatment of contributors to social security and the non-distortion of healthy competition.
The planning of KEAO, of the Single Social Security Entity (EFKA) and the Labor Ministry seeks the protection of citizens who pay their contributions against those who do not meet their obligations. In this direction, KEAO checks, for example, cases of intense delinquency and systematic creation of debts. A common feature of these cases is the continuous creation of arrears and the nonexistence of assets of the debtor to cover debts.
Kathimerini
