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How the world sees Greece
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Greece's lenders object to parts of its austerity plan
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's foreign lenders have rejected parts of a nearly 12-billion-euro austerity package prepared by the government, Greek officials said on Sunday as the two sides resumed talks after a month-long hiatus. The so-called "troika" of inspectors from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund returned to Athens on Friday to conclude a report on Greece's progress in meeting the terms of its latest bailout. The inspectors, who held talks with Greece's finance minister on Sunday, must approve the plan to trim roughly 11. ...
Greek Party Chiefs to Meet on Budget Cuts, No Decision Reached
 Kansas City Star | Greek Party Chiefs to Meet on Budget Cuts, No Decision Reached Wall Street Journal ATHENS--The leaders of the three parties that make up Greece's coalition government failed late Sunday to sign off on a final package of spending cuts the country must make to meet terms of its international bailout. Speaking to journalists, the head ... Greek gov't fails to agree on spending cuts Greek Coalition Partner Says No Decision Taken on Spending Cuts Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras: Painful cuts will restore credibility |
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Greek gov't fails to agree on spending cuts
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Venizelos Says Greece, Troika in Final Stage of Talks on Cuts
Kansas City Star | Venizelos Says Greece, Troika in Final Stage of Talks on Cuts Businessweek By Natalie Weeks and Maria Petrakis on September 09, 2012 Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the Pasok party which supports Greece's coalition government, said negotiations with international creditors on an 11.5 billion- euro package of spending cuts ... Greek Coalition Partner Says No Decision Taken on Spending Cuts Greece fails to agree on spending cuts Tens Of Thousands Protest Greek Austerity Measures |
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Greece Outlines Cuts to Troika Inspectors
 The Associated Press | Greece Outlines Cuts to Troika Inspectors Wall Street Journal After a more-than-two-hour meeting between Greece's finance minister and officials from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank—the so-called troika—both sides said the meeting, which followed a monthlong ... Greece's govt discusses spending cuts Venizelos Says Greece, Troika in Final Stage of Talks on Cuts |
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Eurozone crisis: Greece faces more cuts after talks with EU, ECB and IMF
Prime minister Antonis Samaras insists the country must accept the bailout, in spite of protests and political tension
With pressure mounting on Greece to apply yet more stinging austerity in exchange for further rescue funds – or face the prospect of bankruptcy and default – inspectors representing the debt-choked country's troika of creditors held discussions in Athens on Sunday with the finance minister, Yiannis Stournaras.
Envoys from the EU, ECB and IMF spent almost three hours examining the controversial package of €11.7bn (£9.4bn) in spending cuts that Greece has finally drawn up after months of tortuous wrangling. A senior official said that, though the climate was good – reflecting the noticeable shift in stance towards Athens in recent weeks – the atmosphere was also intense with "fierce horse-trading" over measures that many fear will exacerbate the recession-plagued nation's plight if they are enforced, as foreseen, between 2013 and 2014.
Amid heightened political tension and growing opposition on the street, the two leftwing leaders supporting the shaky coalition government also met prime minister Antonis Samaras late on Sunday in a last-ditch effort to soften the impact of the cuts.
Increasingly, the socialist Pasok leader, Evangelos Venizelos, and the Democratic Left leader, Fotis Kouvellis, have stepped up criticism of the measures, saying they will unfairly hit society's most vulnerable, particularly pensioners and low-income workers.
But with Greece's place in the eurozone and his own survival dependent on the reforms, Samaras, who is to hold talks with troika officials on Monday, has dug in his heels. Opening the country's international trade fair in Thessaloniki at the weekend, he insisted that the €31.5bn cash injection Greece stands to receive in return for the cuts will instantly improve the liquidity of the country's cash-starved market. In recent months, he said, Greece "had come very close to leaving the eurozone."
• Read Phillip Inman's article Primary Greek tax evaders are the professional classes.
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Greece's govt discusses spending cuts
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Troika inspectors question part of Greek austerity plan: official
 NEWS.com.au | Troika inspectors question part of Greek austerity plan: official Reuters ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's international lenders have questioned some of the measures included in a near 12 billion-euro ($15 billion) austerity package prepared by the government and have demanded more details before signing off on the plan, ... Greek Minister Says Still Work Ahead as Troika Meets in Athens Greek PM: Painful Cuts Will Restore Credibility |
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Dutch elections seen as a measure of volatile eurozone
Vote regarded as Europe's bellwether ballot with Socialist pary expected to double seats and Labour vying closely with liberals
A year from retirement after decades working in a bank, Ger Coolan is contemplating the unlikeliest switch in his political conduct ever – voting for a bunch of former Maoists.
When the Dutch go to the polls on Wednesday in an early election seen across Europe as a bellwether ballot, the well-to-do, middle-class 64-year-old will embody the extreme volatility surrounding the vote.
"You've got the Germans bossing us around. Taxes are going to go up, pensions are going to be cut. And all this because of Europe. It would be much better just to let Greece leave the euro and carry on with the strong countries," he said. "The Socialists are much better for the common people."
The Socialists, who have renounced their 1970s Maoism and have never been in government, look poised to double their seats in the crunch election by campaigning against Europe and the austerity that has sent governments toppling across the union, including the Netherlands, a successful prosperous core EU member with low unemployment and high quality of life.
Between them, the hard-left Socialists and the far-right Freedom party, united in their hostility to Brussels, their resistance to austerity at home, and their opposition to helping the struggling eurozone countries of the south, look likely to take a third of the 150-seat parliament, shifting the terms of the national debate and complicating the eurozone's fight to survive.
"It will be a big anti-European bloc," said Sarah de Lange, an Amsterdam University political scientist. "This campaign is all about Europe. The Netherlands have gone from being the most reliable ally on Europe to very hostile."
In Maastricht, the small wealthy southern town synonymous with EU integration and best known as the birthplace of the euro 20 years ago, the mood is sour. "I'm voting for Wilders," said Jo, a cafe owner, referring to the far-right anti-Islam populist, Geert Wilders and his Freedom party. "He's the only one who talks straight. He was the first to say we should get out of the euro. Now everyone's saying it."
While neither the hard left nor the far right look likely to make it into government, their success in shaping the agenda has also forced the mainstream parties, particularly on the centre right, to turn much more eurosceptic, with the interim prime minister, Mark Rutte, declaring in a TV debate that Greece is not getting another euro of Dutch taxpayers' money.
Rutte's centre-right minority coalition collapsed in April because of Europe. Now its fate will be decided by how the voters feel about Europe.
The Rutte government, lined up alongside the Germans, was the most hawkish in preaching austerity to Greece and other eurozone laggards. It was then hoisted on its own petard when it emerged that spending cuts and tax rises worth up to €16bn would be needed if Holland was to meet its EU-set budget deficit target by next year.
Wilders pulled the plug on the minority government by vetoing welfare cuts, triggering Wednesday's election. Seen as to blame for bringing down the government, Wilders, who has with some success sought to turn the election into a referendum on Europe (Dutch out), looks to be a loser, forecast to forfeit a quarter of his 24 seats. But analysts point out that Wilders regularly polls less than he actually achieves.
The hard-left Socialists have been the big beneficiary of the turmoil and the extreme unpredictability, although they have gone down in the most recent polls because of the lacklustre performance of its leader, Emile Roemer, in the TV debates.
"The television debates have had a huge impact," said Paul Nieuwenburg, a politics professor at Leiden University. "The volatility is a reflection of the incoherence of the parties as they scramble for votes. Wilders has wrought havoc by understanding clearly that people are very disaffected with the traditional parties."
The election is being watched closely in Brussels and across Europe not only for the message a founding EU member sends about the union's worst-ever crisis, but because Dutch politics are often a reliable gauge of broader European political trends, from the rise of maverick populists a decade ago, to the referendum rejection of a European constitution in 2005.
The sense is that most Dutch remain guardedly pro-EU and in favour of the single currency. But they are deeply reluctant to transfer more budget and fiscal powers to Brussels – the EU elite's response to the crisis. And they are unhappy with deep spending cuts made quickly to meet EU targets by next year. Such a policy is likely to keep Brussels happy but throw the country into an unnecessary recession, whereas a slower, more phased programme of reforms would do less damage to a fundamentally sound economy.
Reflecting the public mood as well as the pressure from the political extremes, centrist parties, always strongly pro-EU, are now sounding much more ambivalent.
A detailed academic study of the manifestoes and statements of the 12 parties expected to enter the new parliament found that only three could be described as unequivocally pro-EU and pro-euro.
Among those three is the mainstream centre-left Dutch Labour party which was in the doldrums only weeks ago, but has staged a remarkable recovery due to the strong TV performances of its new leader, Diederik Samsom, to the extent it is now running neck-and-neck with Rutte's rightwing liberals, the VVD, at the top of the polls and clawing back support from the hard left.
Pundits predict three months of post-election wrangling over a Labour-VVD coalition which will bicker over the speed, scale, and depth of spending cuts and return the Netherlands to a broadly pro-European path, but with many more ifs and buts.
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Greece's Golden Dawn attack market vendors
 euronews | Greece's Golden Dawn attack market vendors euronews Members of Greece's extreme-right Golden Dawn party are under investigation for posing as police. It comes after the emergence of a video which appears to show the group's supporters in the town of Rafina, near Athens, asking to see migrant vendors' ... Racists target immigrants in Greece Golden Dawn Assails Electronic ID's for Greeks |
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Greek PM: Painful Cuts Will Restore Credibility
 Deutsche Welle | Greek PM: Painful Cuts Will Restore Credibility NPR THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras insisted Saturday that the latest package of deep spending cuts, which will once again affect wages and pensions, will be the last, but he also defended the measures as necessary to ... Thousands of Greeks protest against new round of austerity cuts Thousands Protest Greek Austerity Measures at Trade Fair |
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Greeks protest fresh cuts as Troika auditors visit
 Business Recorder | Greeks protest fresh cuts as Troika auditors visit Focus News Thessaloniki. More than 12,000 protesters marched Saturday against fresh austerity measures the Greek government has prepared to win another slice of an international bailout loan, AFP reported. As auditors from Greece's international creditors ... Merkel calls for Greek solution The bankers' dictatorship in Greece Greece to resume talks with troika |
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Thousands of Greeks protest against new round of austerity cuts
A few protesters burned European Union flags while others threw watermelons and peaches in support of struggling farmers, but the largely peaceful protests otherwise passed off without incident as 3,500 policemen looked on....
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Greek premier says painful 'last' round of cuts will help restore country's ...
 San Francisco Chronicle | Greek premier says painful 'last' round of cuts will help restore country's ... Washington Post THESSALONIKI, Greece — Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras insisted Saturday that the latest package of deep spending cuts, which will once again affect wages and pensions, will be the last, but he also defended the measures as necessary to restoring ... Greeks protest fresh cuts as 'troika' auditors visit Thousands of Greeks protest against new round of austerity cuts Greek PM: Painful cuts will restore credibility |
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