Capital controls imposed on depositors in 2015 will end, says new PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Capital controls imposed on depositors at the height of Greece’s debt crisis are being lifted after four years.

The policy change will finally remove restrictions on companies and individuals sending money abroad, which were introduced to prevent bank runs during the 2015 Grexit crisis.

Signalling a new era for the country at the centre of the turmoil that engulfed the eurozone for almost a decade, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on Monday declared the financial restrictions “a thing of the past”.

Addressing the Greek parliament barely seven weeks after his centre-right government assumed power, he described the dismantling of the banking measures as the end of “a four-year cycle of insecurity”.

“After 50 whole months they are being abolished,” he told MPs.

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With controls fully lifted, companies and savers will be able to make transfers abroad from 1 September.

Mitsotakis’s new pro-business administration, which sees domestic and foreign investment as key to economic recovery, said restoration of the free movement of capital will help restore confidence in Greece.

Fears of a disorderly exit in mid-2015 prompted panicked depositors to make mass cash withdrawals while the leftist government led by Alexis Tsipras hammered out the terms of emergency funding from the EU and IMF.

Mitsotakis, a former banker himself, had long described lifting of the controls as a priority for the country’s return to normality. Although gradually eased in recent years, the remaining restrictions had been interpreted as an impediment to the revival of an economy that had been bailed out three times since 2010.