How Long-Term Care Is Funded in Greece: Public Spending, Household Costs and the Funding Challenge

Long-term care is never free simply because no invoice reaches government. An older person may receive unpaid daily support from a daughter who reduces her working hours, purchase additional help privately, attend a municipally supported service and rely on the health system when needs become acute. Public expenditure records only part of the economic cost. The remainder is carried through household income, lost employment, unpaid time and care that may never enter a formal account.

This distinction is particularly important in Greece. Formal public expenditure on long-term care remains low by international standards, while families continue to provide a substantial share of everyday support. Publicly supported services exist, including municipal and community programmes, elements of residential provision and health-related support, but Greece does not yet operate a single comprehensive long-term care entitlement or financing mechanism comparable with the more mature formal systems found in some other European countries.

Within the Greece Ageing, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub, financing therefore needs to be understood as more than a question of government expenditure. It determines which needs become a public responsibility, which remain with households, whether services can expand beyond existing capacity, how workers are paid and developed, and whether access depends on geography, family availability or ability to purchase additional care.

The central funding challenge for Greece is consequently twofold. It must finance greater formal support as population ageing increases demand, while designing that expansion carefully enough that additional expenditure produces accessible, person-centred and sustainable care rather than simply adding money to a fragmented system.

Greece starts from a low formal long-term care spending base

Greece’s recorded expenditure on formal long-term care is among the lowest across OECD countries. Recent comparative evidence places total long-term care expenditure below 0.5% of gross domestic product, while projections used in Greek fiscal analysis have placed public long-term care spending at around 0.1% of GDP under existing policy assumptions. Precise international comparisons require caution because countries classify social long-term care differently and some expenditure is difficult to capture consistently. Even allowing for that limitation, Greece clearly operates with a relatively small formally financed long-term care sector.

This does not mean that little care is being provided. It means that much of the care economy sits outside conventional public expenditure. Family members provide assistance without wages; households purchase support directly; migrant care workers may be employed privately; voluntary and non-profit organisations contribute services; and health services absorb some consequences when adequate community support is unavailable.

That difference between formal spending and total care effort is fundamental. A country can appear to have a low-cost long-term care system because substantial costs have been transferred to households rather than eliminated.

It also complicates fiscal forecasting. If Greece gradually formalises support that families currently provide unpaid, public expenditure could rise even if the total amount of care delivered changed relatively little. If coverage expands at the same time as the number of people with care needs grows, the increase could be larger still.

The question is therefore not whether Greece can preserve an exceptionally low recorded expenditure ratio indefinitely. It is what level and form of public financing can support adequate care without undermining wider fiscal sustainability.

Funding currently follows programmes rather than one unified entitlement

Greek long-term care has developed through several programmes and institutional routes rather than a single integrated financing architecture. Responsibility crosses social policy, municipalities, the health system and different types of provider. This creates multiple routes through which public money can reach support.

Important community structures include the Open Care Centres for Older People, known as KAPI; Day Care Centres for Older People, or KIFI; and the Help at Home programme. Their purposes differ, but collectively they provide an important part of the publicly supported local infrastructure around older people.

Residential provision has a different funding pattern. Public facilities exist, while much general residential care is provided through private profit-making and non-profit organisations. The National Organization for the Provision of Health Services, EOPYY, also has a financing role in specified forms of care. Public funding can therefore intersect with provision that is organisationally outside the state.

The operational consequence is fragmentation. A person does not necessarily encounter one assessment, one funding authority and one clearly defined package covering the continuum from low-level assistance to intensive dependency. Eligibility, availability, programme rules and the local supply of services all affect what support can actually be accessed.

This makes organisational structure and accountability particularly important. When several public bodies and provider types contribute to long-term care, financial responsibility needs to be clear enough that people do not become the mechanism through which institutional boundaries are reconciled.

Municipal services are part of the financing architecture

Municipalities occupy an important position because many community services are delivered close to where people live. Their role illustrates why long-term care financing cannot be understood solely through a national spending total.

A centrally supported programme may ultimately depend on municipal organisation, local workforce capacity and physical infrastructure. Funding may establish a service, but local conditions determine how many people can actually receive it, how intensively they can be supported and how consistently provision operates.

Two municipalities with similar older populations can therefore experience different effective levels of coverage. One may have established teams, good local coordination and manageable travel distances. Another may face vacancies, difficult geography or demand substantially above available capacity. Nominal public provision does not guarantee equivalent access.

This is one reason why future financing needs to connect money with service intelligence. Useful governance information includes not only expenditure but also:

• the number and profile of people seeking support;
• coverage relative to assessed or identified need;
• waiting and unmet demand;
• workforce capacity and continuity;
• service intensity and changes in need; and
• outcomes for people and family carers.

Without this connection, additional funding can be distributed without sufficient visibility of whether it reaches the areas experiencing the greatest pressure.

Organisations examining similar questions can use a quality dashboard framework to structure the relationship between resources, capacity, quality and outcomes. It is not a Greek funding instrument, but the governance principle is transferable: expenditure becomes more meaningful when decision-makers can see what it purchases and whether access and outcomes improve.

Scenario: a public service exists, but capacity determines the real entitlement

An 82-year-old man lives alone in a provincial Greek town. Following a period of declining mobility, his daughter contacts the municipality because he is struggling with meals, shopping and household tasks. A community support programme exists locally, so on paper there is a route to assistance.

In practice, the municipal team is already operating near capacity. Staff can offer some support, but not at the frequency the family believes is required. The daughter lives 70 kilometres away and works full-time. She begins paying privately for additional help while travelling twice each week to manage tasks that remain uncovered.

The arrangement prevents an immediate breakdown, but its financing is distributed invisibly. The municipality bears part of the cost, the daughter pays part directly, and she contributes substantial unpaid time and travel. If she reduces her working hours, another economic cost emerges that does not appear in the long-term care budget.

For local governance, the important evidence is not simply that the man is receiving a municipal service. It is the gap between assessed or observed need and funded service capacity. If similar gaps recur across the caseload, the municipality needs a mechanism for showing that pressure to national decision-makers rather than allowing families to compensate indefinitely.

The scenario demonstrates why practical access is a stronger funding measure than the existence of a programme. A nominal entitlement without sufficient workforce or capacity can still leave households carrying much of the cost.

Households finance care through both money and time

Out-of-pocket expenditure is one of the most visible private components of Greek long-term care. Households may purchase home help, employ a live-in or visiting care worker, pay residential fees or meet costs associated with equipment, transport and other support.

Recent comparative analysis indicates that public social protection covers only part of formal home-care costs in Greece. For an older person on median income, the remaining cost can still represent a substantial proportion of disposable income as care needs become more severe. Residential care can create an even larger financial burden.

But direct payment captures only one form of household contribution. Unpaid family care can involve many hours each week of personal assistance, supervision, transport, administration and emotional support. Families may also coordinate privately purchased workers and navigate public services.

This is why family partnership and carer support should be considered part of financing policy. A system that assumes relatives will provide intensive support is making a resource allocation decision even if no public payment changes hands.

The distributional consequences matter. Families with higher incomes may be better able to purchase additional support. Households with several nearby relatives may divide unpaid responsibilities. Someone who lives alone, has no children or has family abroad may have fewer alternatives. Financial design therefore affects equity as well as expenditure.

Informal care is economically valuable but cannot be treated as unlimited capacity

Family support has deep social value and will remain central to Greek long-term care. Many people prefer assistance from relatives for particular aspects of daily life, and families often possess knowledge and continuity that formal services cannot reproduce.

The funding problem arises when public policy implicitly treats that willingness as an inexhaustible resource. Population ageing, smaller families, geographic mobility and women’s employment are changing the supply of potential carers. At the same time, people providing care may themselves be older or managing health conditions.

There is also a difference between voluntary family involvement and care created by the absence of alternatives. If a relative wants to provide companionship and some practical assistance, that is different from leaving employment because essential personal care cannot otherwise be obtained.

Future Greek financing policy therefore needs to recognise informal care in at least three ways: as a contribution with economic value, as a source of potential carer burden and as a variable whose future availability cannot simply be extrapolated from past generations.

This changes the fiscal calculation. Spending that enables a family carer to remain employed may have wider economic benefits. Respite, day support or reliable home care can protect both the person receiving care and the carer’s labour-market participation. The value of formal support should therefore be considered across households and the wider economy, not solely as a cost within a social-care budget.

Residential care illustrates the mixed public-private model

Residential long-term care in Greece demonstrates how public financing and private provision can intersect. General residential services for older people are predominantly provided outside direct state provision, including by profit-making and non-profit organisations. Public residential facilities and specialised structures also form part of the landscape.

A significant policy development has been the ability of EOPYY to contribute towards care fees for eligible users in accredited non-profit residential facilities under arrangements introduced through legislation in 2021. This does not amount to universal public funding of residential care, but it demonstrates a mechanism through which statutory resources can support privately provided long-term care.

The distinction matters for future reform. Greece does not necessarily need government to own every service in order to expand public coverage. Public authorities can finance or reimburse provision delivered by different organisations. But once public money follows people into independently operated services, stronger requirements around eligibility, provider accreditation, quality, pricing and accountability become increasingly important.

Funding and quality therefore cannot be designed separately. A reimbursement mechanism needs clarity about what the payment purchases, what contribution may still be expected from the individual, what standards apply and how public authorities know that care is safe and appropriate.

That relationship between resources and assurance is reflected more broadly in quality standards and assurance frameworks. Expansion through a mixed provider economy can increase capacity, but sustainable public purchasing requires comparable information about quality and outcomes across different organisational forms.

Scenario: a residential placement exposes the boundary between coverage and affordability

An older woman living with advanced frailty can no longer be supported safely through the combination of family assistance and limited home support available to her. Her family begins exploring residential care. They find several options, but the financial implications differ according to provider type, eligibility for public support and the fees charged.

The family initially approaches the decision as though it were simply a choice of care home. It quickly becomes a financing decision as well. They need to understand what public contribution, if any, applies; what the woman must pay from pension income and savings; whether relatives will need to contribute; and whether the arrangement remains affordable if she lives there for several years.

From the system perspective, the case raises a different question. If residential care becomes the only viable option partly because adequate intensive home support was unavailable, then expenditure is being shaped by the structure of service supply as well as the woman’s needs.

A stronger funding model would make the relationship between assessment, available alternatives, public contribution and quality clearer. It would also generate information about why residential placements occur. If people repeatedly enter facilities because community capacity is insufficient, that evidence should influence future investment.

The governance lesson is that financing should not merely process the final placement. It should help reveal whether the care system is offering meaningful alternatives before that point.

Funding home care requires more than paying for visits

Greece’s reform direction towards stronger person-centred home and community care creates an important financing opportunity. Supporting people at home can align with individual preference and may reduce unnecessary institutional use, but the economic case should not be simplified into an assumption that home care is always cheap.

A functioning home-care model requires assessment, scheduling, travel, supervision, workforce training, equipment, information systems and management as well as direct care time. Rural and island geography can increase unit costs. Intensive home support may involve several visits a day and input from health professionals as well as personal carers.

Funding mechanisms that recognise only face-to-face contact risk underfunding the infrastructure required to make those contacts reliable. Conversely, poorly designed block funding can obscure how much support individuals actually receive. The financing model needs to reflect both legitimate provider costs and person-level outcomes.

The operational challenge is particularly visible in home-care demand, capacity and waiting-list management. Expanding eligibility without increasing workforce and operational capacity can turn an improvement in formal entitlement into a queue.

Greece therefore needs to align the pace of coverage expansion with the practical ability to deliver. That does not mean delaying reform until every resource is available. It means sequencing funding, workforce development and service infrastructure together.

Assessment is also a financial control

Any expanded public long-term care system eventually faces a fundamental question: who receives what support at public expense? Needs assessment is therefore both a person-centred process and part of fiscal governance.

A good assessment framework identifies functional needs, living circumstances, risks, goals and the support already available. It should be sufficiently consistent to avoid arbitrary geographic variation while retaining enough flexibility to understand individual circumstances.

Eligibility rules then determine which needs create access to publicly financed services and how much cost remains with the individual. Decisions can be based on dependency, income, age, household circumstances or combinations of these factors. Different countries make different choices because long-term care financing reflects social policy as well as technical assessment.

For Greece, greater coherence would make future expenditure more predictable and access more transparent. If different programmes use different routes and criteria, households may struggle to understand what support exists, while government has difficulty measuring the total population entitled to care.

Assessment also creates data. Aggregated appropriately, information about dependency, living arrangements and unmet need can improve national forecasting. The same system that determines individual support can therefore become a source of intelligence about future service demand.

The rights dimension is important. Assessment should not become a mechanism designed primarily to restrict expenditure. Support planning and review need to remain connected to the person’s circumstances, preferences and changing needs. Fiscal control is legitimate, but it should be transparent rather than achieved through inaccessible services or hidden reliance on families.

Workforce costs will determine whether funding produces real capacity

Long-term care is labour intensive. Greece can allocate additional money to services, but those resources will translate into greater capacity only if organisations can recruit and retain people with the required skills.

This creates a direct relationship between funding policy and employment conditions. If reimbursement or programme budgets are too low to support competitive pay, training, supervision and stable employment, services may experience persistent vacancies and turnover. The apparent savings then reappear as missed support, reduced continuity and additional pressure on families or hospitals.

Greece’s very small recorded formal long-term care workforce makes this particularly important. Expansion involves building a labour market as well as increasing expenditure. Care-worker status, training routes, migration, career development and geographic distribution all influence what each additional euro can purchase.

Workforce financing also needs to account for non-contact activity. Supervision, training, coordination and travel may not be visible to a person receiving a home visit, but they affect safety and continuity. Funding only direct activity can encourage fragile operating models.

For organisations assessing whether service growth can be sustained, the Predictive Workforce Risk Module offers a way to structure consideration of turnover, vacancy, retention and continuity risks. It is not a Greek workforce standard; its relevance lies in linking financial assumptions with the operational workforce required to deliver them.

Scenario: additional funding cannot immediately create additional workers

A regional expansion of home-based support provides additional resources to several municipalities. One municipality is allocated enough funding to increase its service capacity significantly and initially plans to recruit additional care workers quickly.

The recruitment exercise produces fewer suitable applicants than expected. Existing workers are already managing demanding schedules, and neighbouring health and hospitality employers are competing for labour. The municipality can technically spend the budget but cannot safely translate the full amount into additional visits at the planned speed.

Rather than lowering recruitment standards or overloading existing staff, it phases growth. Funding is used for recruitment, structured induction and stronger supervision as well as direct service capacity. Scheduling is redesigned to reduce unnecessary travel, and demand data is used to prioritise people with the greatest immediate need while capacity develops.

The national funding authority sees both expenditure and implementation information. The temporary underspend is therefore understood as a workforce constraint rather than evidence that demand is absent. Repeated workforce difficulties across several areas trigger a wider review of pay, training supply and recruitment strategy.

The scenario illustrates an important principle: budgets are inputs, not capacity. A mature funding system needs to understand why allocated resources do or do not become actual care and adjust workforce policy accordingly.

Public financing increases the need for stronger provider accountability

If Greece expands public purchasing or reimbursement from private and non-profit providers, government will need stronger visibility of what it is buying. This is not an argument for imposing identical organisational structures on every provider. It is an argument for consistent expectations around public money.

Financial accountability should connect with quality, access and outcomes. A provider can meet expenditure rules while still delivering poor continuity or weak person-centred care. Equally, an organisation can produce extensive quality documentation without demonstrating that publicly financed capacity reaches people who need it.

Relevant assurance may include service volumes, staffing, incidents, complaints, user experience, changes in functional outcomes and financial information. The precise framework should reflect Greek legislation and institutional responsibilities rather than importing another country’s regulatory model.

Providers and system partners examining the maturity of such arrangements can use a governance maturity assessment to test how responsibility, evidence, escalation and oversight connect. Again, the tool does not determine Greek compliance. Its practical value is in asking whether governance arrangements are capable of showing that resources translate into safe and effective delivery.

This relationship becomes more important as the provider market diversifies. Public, municipal, non-profit and commercial services may have different ownership structures, but people using publicly financed care need confidence that core expectations remain visible.

Scenario: public purchasing expands capacity but exposes an assurance gap

A municipality facing increasing home-support demand decides that its own workforce cannot expand quickly enough. Additional public funding makes it possible to purchase some capacity from an independent provider operating locally.

The arrangement increases available care hours and initially reduces pressure. Several months later, however, municipal staff realise that they have good information about invoices and scheduled activity but much less consistent information about continuity, missed visits, complaints and changes in people’s needs.

The financial arrangement is therefore functioning more strongly than the quality relationship. Rather than abandoning the mixed model, the municipality strengthens the agreement. Expectations for service reporting become clearer; escalation routes are established for significant concerns; user and family feedback is reviewed; and recurring quality issues can influence future purchasing decisions.

The provider also benefits from clearer expectations because operational problems can be discussed before they become contractual disputes. Information about staffing and demand helps both parties understand whether service instability reflects provider performance, unrealistic volumes or wider workforce scarcity.

This is an important issue as Greece considers a more coordinated mixed economy of care. Purchasing external capacity can expand choice and supply, but public financing needs an assurance architecture proportionate to the risks. The objective is not administrative burden for its own sake. It is visibility of whether public money produces reliable support.

Funding reform must address regional and household inequality

A national financing system can still produce unequal outcomes if local supply differs substantially. An entitlement has limited practical value where no provider or workforce is available to deliver it. Conversely, relying heavily on household payment can create different access according to income and family resources.

Greece’s geography makes these questions particularly important. Island and remote rural communities can face higher delivery costs and thinner labour markets. Uniform payment rates may therefore purchase less capacity in areas where travel and recruitment are difficult.

Funding design needs enough sensitivity to recognise legitimate cost variation without allowing geographic difference to become unexamined inequality. This may involve targeted workforce measures, additional support for remote delivery, investment in transport and digital infrastructure or different ways of organising services.

Household inequality requires similar attention. Means-testing can concentrate public resources on people with lower incomes, but complex rules can create barriers and cliff edges. Universal approaches can simplify access but require greater public expenditure. Most systems therefore make choices about the balance between collective funding and personal contribution.

Whichever direction Greece takes, inequality, access and inclusion need to be measured as outcomes of financing rather than treated as secondary policy objectives. A financially balanced system that systematically excludes particular groups is not socially sustainable.

Prevention changes the timing and distribution of expenditure

Prevention is often presented as a way to save money, but that claim needs careful treatment. Some preventive interventions reduce later expenditure; others improve health and independence while adding costs. The stronger case is that long-term care financing should not wait until dependency becomes severe before public support begins.

Low-intensity home assistance, falls prevention, rehabilitation, accessible housing, social participation and support for chronic-condition management can help people retain capability. Where effective, these interventions may delay or reduce the need for more intensive services.

From a funding perspective, the difficulty is that the organisation paying for prevention may not be the organisation receiving the later financial benefit. A municipality might invest in community support while avoided expenditure appears within hospital care. A housing adaptation may reduce falls without the housing budget receiving any direct return.

This is why prevention and early intervention require system-level governance. Funding decisions need to recognise outcomes that cross institutional boundaries.

Greece’s future model has an opportunity to embed this principle while formal long-term care is still developing. If financing is constructed only around high dependency, the system may inadvertently create incentives to respond late. A continuum that funds early support as well as intensive care is more consistent with ageing at home and person-centred reform.

Better data can show where the real costs sit

Fragmented financing produces fragmented information. National government may know expenditure within a particular programme but not the full volume of privately purchased care. Municipalities may understand local service pressure without having a complete picture of household costs. Health services may see admissions associated with care breakdown without being able to connect them to gaps in community support.

Improving financial governance therefore depends on better data integration. This does not require creating one enormous database containing every detail of a person’s life. It requires common enough definitions and information flows to understand how needs, services, expenditure and outcomes relate.

Important questions include whether public coverage is reaching people with the greatest need, which groups rely most heavily on private payment, how much formal care is being substituted by families and where service shortages create costs elsewhere in the system.

Digital infrastructure can help, but interoperability is as much an organisational issue as a technical one. Data quality and performance metrics need consistent definitions, clear responsibility and a purpose connected to decision-making.

Better information also strengthens public accountability. If expenditure rises as Greece expands formal long-term care, citizens will reasonably expect evidence about what has improved. Coverage, waiting, continuity, user experience, carer burden and outcomes provide a richer account than spending totals alone.

Fiscal sustainability requires explicit choices rather than hidden rationing

Population ageing means that Greece will need to consider long-term care alongside pensions, healthcare and other public priorities. Expanding formal coverage will create expenditure pressure, particularly if public provision moves closer to levels seen in countries with more developed long-term care systems.

There is no financing mechanism that removes these trade-offs. General taxation spreads costs across the revenue base. Social insurance creates a more visible dedicated contribution but still depends substantially on employment and earnings. Personal contributions can limit public expenditure but increase household burden. Private insurance can supplement protection but is unlikely to provide a complete solution for population-wide dependency risk.

The strategic objective is therefore not to find a cost-free model. It is to make choices transparent. Hidden rationing through limited supply, family obligation or unaffordable private costs may constrain public expenditure, but it does so by transferring risk rather than managing it.

For Greece, gradual reform may offer an advantage. A clearer national approach to assessment and entitlement can be developed alongside expansion of home and community capacity. Funding can increase progressively while government monitors utilisation, workforce effects and household costs.

Scenario modelling is valuable because future expenditure depends on policy as well as demography. Leaders can use a digital twin scenario approach to explore how different assumptions about demand, workforce and service capacity interact. Such modelling cannot predict Greece’s fiscal future precisely, but it can make dependencies and trade-offs visible before commitments are made.

From fragmented expenditure to a clearer care settlement

The most important financing reform may ultimately be greater clarity about the social settlement itself. People need to understand what support can reasonably be expected collectively, what contribution households may make and how decisions are reached. Providers need sufficient certainty to invest in workforce and services. Municipalities need funding arrangements capable of responding to changing local demand. National government needs visibility of expenditure, quality and future liabilities.

A coherent settlement does not necessarily require one organisation to finance and provide everything. Many successful long-term care systems use multiple providers and levels of government. What matters is whether responsibilities fit together from the perspective of the person requiring support.

For Greece, this means connecting several reform questions that can otherwise be treated separately: assessment, eligibility, home-care expansion, residential funding, family-carer support, workforce development, provider regulation and data. Each has financial consequences, and decisions in one area reshape pressure elsewhere.

The transition also needs to protect existing strengths. Family involvement, municipal relationships and community organisations can remain important within a more formal system. Formalisation should provide greater choice and security, not replace valuable relationships with unnecessary bureaucracy.

The strongest opportunity is therefore to move from financing individual programmes towards financing a more coherent continuum of support, while preserving flexibility in how that support is delivered locally.

International learning is about financing principles, not copying mechanisms

Countries finance long-term care in markedly different ways. Some rely heavily on taxation, others use dedicated social insurance, and many combine public entitlements with user contributions. The institutional mechanisms reflect each country’s welfare state, tax system, labour market and political settlement.

Greece cannot simply import another country’s funding architecture. A contribution-based insurance model, for example, interacts differently with a labour market depending on employment patterns, contribution collection and the size of the working-age population. A highly decentralised model requires local fiscal and administrative capacity that may not exist uniformly.

The transferable lessons lie at a more fundamental level. Public promises should correspond to deliverable service capacity. Eligibility should be understandable. Household contributions should not make essential care inaccessible. Funding should support quality rather than only activity. Informal care should be recognised without becoming an assumed substitute for formal provision. Geographic variation should be visible, and public expenditure should be connected to outcomes.

Greece is especially instructive because it is considering reform from a relatively low formal expenditure base. Decisions taken during expansion can shape the system for decades. Building funding, data, workforce and quality arrangements together may be easier than trying to retrofit them after a large provider market has already developed.

Conclusion

Greece’s long-term care funding challenge is not simply that public expenditure is low. The deeper issue is that the costs of dependency are distributed across state programmes, municipalities, statutory health insurance, providers, household payments and extensive unpaid family care without yet forming a fully coherent financing settlement. Formal spending therefore reveals only part of the resources already devoted to supporting people with long-term needs.

Population ageing will make that arrangement harder to sustain unchanged. Greater formal coverage is likely to require additional public resources, but money alone will not create an effective system. Financing needs to develop alongside transparent assessment, adequate workforce capacity, stronger home and community services, proportionate provider assurance and information capable of showing where unmet need and household burden remain.

The strongest direction is not necessarily a single funding mechanism. It is a clearer relationship between need, entitlement, contribution, service availability and accountability. Municipal and community strengths can remain central, families can continue to participate by choice, and public and independent providers can coexist, provided that responsibility does not disappear between them.

For Greece, sustainable long-term care financing will ultimately be judged not by how little or how much the country spends in isolation, but by whether available resources create equitable access, reliable support and dignity without placing unsustainable costs on households or future public finances. That is the transition from funding programmes to financing a long-term care system.