Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday promised to funnel a major portion of the 246 million euros his government expects to receive from the auction of four national television broadcast licenses towards “weaker social groups”.
The total sum was accumulated in an unprecedented three-day auction that lasted until the early morning hours of Friday, a process that kept bidders’ representatives isolated in a government building under police guard and without contact with the outside world or among themselves.
Tsipras made the statement at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new segment of a currently under-construction highway in western Greece. He promised that two-thirds of the money from the TV license auction will be flow into state coffers by the end of the year, with the remaining portion to be collected in 2017.
