The Ministry of Development has left organic product certification companies completely unchecked, as ESYD, the General Secretariat for Consumers, and the famous new Independent Market Surveillance and Consumer Protection Authority, supervised by Takis Theodorikakos, pretend not to understand what is taking place.
Selling smoke and mirrors
Mr. Theodorikakos appears in the media attempting to show he is making every effort to lower prices, but his practices not only yield no results, they actively facilitate the fleecing of consumers.
At the same time, it is obvious that he is deceiving citizens, since in the summer of 2025, after the fact, he brandished two cases he had forwarded to the prosecutor, resulting not from audits but from citizen complaints, while claiming that the famous ESYD carried out sweeping inspections.
All these claims regarding sweeping inspections proved in practice to be fairy tales.
This is because even today they allow fake organic products to reach the consumer's plate at exorbitant prices, resulting in consumer deception and creating conditions of unfair practices and market distortions against those who genuinely produce and struggle under difficult conditions to supply organic products to demanding consumers and exporters.
The vested interests of fraud
The issue, of course, is that he cannot claim ignorance.
And had he not known, he should have bothered to read the revelation by BN and the report by DG AGRI, particularly regarding organic products, and taken immediate action alongside the agencies he oversees.
Instead, absolutely nothing has been done for over a year, and fraudsters continue to supply fake organics to the market, securing immense profits. It appears that the interests behind organic fraud, which naturally ends in illegal subsidies from OPEKEPE, are so enormous that Mr. Theodorikakos does not wish to touch them.
Thus, neither he nor the bodies he oversees showed any surprise:
That products that had not completed the three-year transitional period were found to have received organic farming certification.
This means that olive oil was placed on the market which is not organic, but rather from cultivation in transition to organic farming.
This is a product sold with a price markup that does not meet the standards of organic farming.
That a company whose certification had been revoked, specifically IRIS, based in Crete (the interlocutors of «Frappe» on wiretaps), was handing out certifications wholesale while under suspension.
ESYD pretended not to notice, announced no investigation, and the Minister did not question whether those who illegally obtained certifications are selling organic products on the market that are by no means guaranteed to be genuine organics.
That the famous BIO Hellas is being investigated by DG AGRI for unrealistic inspection data, in plain terms accused of fake inspections.
He likely considers it plausible, as found by DG AGRI, that two inspectors of Bio Hellas conducted more than 1,000 inspections each in 2025.
He likely considers it plausible that certain inspectors conduct 5 to 8 audits per day, when an inspection lasts on average three hours, which implies these individuals do not eat or sleep around the clock, conducting audits after midnight and without stopping.
The affair naturally recalls the counting of phantom sheep by the heavy artillery of OPEKEPE, which was completely fabricated out of thin air.
That TUV Hellas (TUV NORD), out of the 935 organic enterprises it certifies, failed to conduct even a single mandatory verification on some of them in 2024, as stipulated by law.
Did he or ESYD ask for data regarding what occurred in 2025 and this year, and whether trading companies continue to sell alleged organic products without oversight?
Kicking the ball into the stands, grand words, and the usual beasts of burden pay
The above and many more reports arriving from the European Union show that the Ministry of Development and Minister Takis Theodorikakos, along with the agencies he oversees, have turned evasion and kicking the ball into the stands into a habit.
What does it matter, after all, if the bill is handed to the sucker beast of burden called the consumer, and to the honest organic producers who exist?
However, this situation concerns not only Mr. Takis Theodorikakos but the government as a whole, as well as the entire political establishment that expends its energy on clashes over... Koulkoudinas and calls on the other beast of burden called the Greek taxpayer to pay for the handiwork of Kostas Tsiaras with organic audits, as well as the directing and extras of the production staged by Takis Theodorikakos to sell tickets claiming he is cutting prices.
The task force of... nonsense
To grasp the overall mockery inflicted on citizens, we recall that during Tsiaras's ministerial tenure, the creation of a TASK FORCE (they even applied a bombastic label) was announced for the organic production sector, with the primary mission of coordinating, supervising, and accelerating all necessary actions to enhance the credibility, transparency, and effectiveness of the control and certification system for organic products, chaired by General Secretary of Agricultural Development and Food Spyridon Protopsaltis.
It would be nice if they told us what exactly this celebrated Task Force did, although it is practically evident that it was just another burst of hot air from Kostas Tsiaras.
We note that Mr. Protopsaltis merely oversees ELGO-DIMITRA, which performs no audits and has no audit framework. Other than that, they set up a task force.
Nikos Karoutzos
nkaroutzos@gmail.com
www.bankingnews.gr
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