BERLIN ? Clashes between police and protesters broke out in Athens on Friday, a day after Greek leaders agreed to deep austerity cuts in a last-ditch bid to keep their country from going bankrupt.
The nation?s leaders have said that they believe many of the measures will worsen an already harsh recession, but the country?s lenders have demanded cuts in exchange for an international bailout, the second in less than two years. And though Greeks wonder if they can tolerate more pain, some European leaders have said that the country needs to slash spending even more.
In Greece on Friday, the fallout from the deal shook the political establishment and society as a whole, although few expected a serious challenge to passage of the new measures. The head of a junior partner in Greece?s coalition government, George Karatzaferis, said Friday that his right-wing LAOS party would vote against the austerity measures on Sunday. On Thursday, the deputy labor minister, Yiannis Koutsoukos, a Socialist, resigned, saying that the cuts would do far too much to hurt Greek society.
Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said late Thursday in Brussels that Greece had little alternative if it wanted to remain part of the euro currency.
?If we see the salvation and future of the country in the euro area, in Europe, we have to do whatever we have to do to get the program approved,? he told reporters.
Labor leaders called a 48-hour general strike that started on Friday, paralyzing the country as thousands flooded Athens? streets. Protesters threw gasoline bombs and stones at riot police, Reuters reported, and police said that two officers were injured.
Greek leaders still must find $432 million in additional spending cuts by Wednesday, the deadline that European Union officials set to wrap up their decision on whether to give Greece another $173 billion bailout. Greece plans to target most of those cuts on defense spending, a Greek government official said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under negotiation.
Without the bailout, Greece will likely default by March 20, when a deadline looms on a $19 billion debt payment. A disorderly default could result in Greece?s being casting off the euro currency.
But European patience appears to be running out.
?We cannot live with a system where promises are made and repeated and repeated,? said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the caucus of 17 nations that use the euro, in Brussels Thursday night, when implementing those promises is ?from time to time too weak.?
The agreed-to cuts will further hit a society already reeling from years of recession and rising unemployment. Minimum wage, currently about $1,000 a month, would drop to $780, and even less for those under 25 years old. Health-care spending would contract. Other social welfare payments would be cut, and 15,000 public-sector workers would be laid off by the end of the year, followed by 135,000 more by 2015.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=7f7d875062e03b785ed5d688125f8f8d
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