Greece plans to cover 90% of wages for a year for remote hires in mountain and island areas

Greece’s Labour Ministry has announced a programme covering 90% of salary and social security contributions for twelve months where a business hires someone living in a mountainous, remote or island area and employs them remotely. Labour Minister Niki Kerameos set out the scheme on 22 September 2026, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis restated it on 27 September.

It is the first Greek subsidised-employment programme built around telework rather than around a physical workplace. The framing is decentralisation: keeping working-age people in areas that have been losing them, by making it cheap for an employer anywhere to hire someone who stays put.

Why this matters

Most European schemes that pay for remote work pay the worker to move somewhere. This one pays the employer to hire someone who already lives there. If you live in a Greek island or mountain community and work remotely, or would like to, this changes what you are worth to a prospective employer for a year. Terms, budget and a start date have not been published yet, and the state employment agency DYPA is reported to be planning a pilot of around 1,000 places, possibly from October, so nothing can be applied for today.

It also sits alongside the separate €10,000 relocation grant announced earlier in September, which works in the opposite direction by paying a household to move to a border or island region. Between them, Greece is now testing both halves of the same idea.

What to watch

The ministerial decision setting the terms. Until it is published, the 90% figure and the twelve-month duration are an announcement rather than a scheme, and the eligibility conditions, including whether the employer must be Greek, are unknown.