ACCORDING to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, Greece has a much bigger budget deficit than that reported by the Greek government last year.
New data from the Greek government shows a deficit of 13.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), against the 12.7 per cent that was originally reported.
Even now Eurostat says that it doubts the latest figures and that they will probably be revised upwards.
It stated yesterday: ‘Eurostat is expressing a reservation on the quality of the data reported by Greece . . . this could lead to a revision for the year 2009 of the order of 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points of GDP for the deficit and 5 to 7 percentage points of GDP for the debt.’
Greece is currently negotiating the details of the emergency rescue package from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Already IMF and EU representatives have been installed in crucial Greek ministries, including the Treasury, to see that the pledged cuts are being carried through, despite the massive resistance that is being mounted to them by the working class and the small farmers.
But the latest warnings from Brussels have pushed up the market interest rate on 10-year debt bonds to above 8.5 per cent.
Greece must raise about 10 billion euros (13.4 billion dollars) by the end of May to avert a partial default.
Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said on Wednesday that he expected the loan deal to be finalised by mid-May.
The International Monetary Fund has however warned that the Greek crisis could spread to other weak economies in the 16-nation eurozone.
‘In the near term, the main risk is that, if unchecked, market concerns about sovereign liquidity and solvency in Greece could turn into a full-blown sovereign debt crisis, leading to some contagion,’ the IMF said.
By using the term ‘some contagion’ the IMF is suggesting that a ‘full-blown sovereign debt crisis could lead to the break up of the EU’ with Greece and other ‘PIGS’ states being shown the door out of the single currency.
The Greek government’s target is to reduce the deficit to 5.6 per cent of GDP in 2011, and 2.8 per cent of GDP in 2012.
The working class and the small farmers are resisting in a revolutionary way, with the struggle having its own logic of development.
Quantity became quality last Wednesday when Greek seafarers, supported by masses of workers and youth, defied a judicial decision that their projected strike action was illegal, and took illegal strike action on the basis that the struggle to defend their living standards, jobs and their families could never be illegal as far as the working class is concerned.
With that decision to defy bourgeois legality the Greek working class embarked more decisively on the road to revolution, with their picket lines successfully defying the riot police and the military police.
Yesterday, tens of thousands of Greek civil servants staged a 24-hour strike in protest against the Papandreou socialist government’s austerity programme.
An issue of 10-year Greek bonds totalling 8.5 billion euros expires on May 19. Very stern measures will be required against the working class and the youth to maintain the rule of the Greek capitalists in this situation.
For the Greek workers the building of the Trotskyist movement, the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, is absolutely decisive for leading the struggle for the successful completion of the Greek revolution.
However, the crisis and the struggle are international. Where Greece treads today the UK, with its budget deficit at 11.6 per cent of GDP, and the national debt at 62 per cent of GDP, will tread tomorrow.
In the UK it is becoming impossible to have a legal strike action, as the BA cabin crew and rail workers have found out.
The gigantic pressure on wages and jobs and the overwhelming necessity to defend both will force the British workers also to defy bourgeois law and the capitalist state.
All over the EU the working class is learning that the only way to defend their interests is through a socialist revolution, and that the only right that they have is the right to insurrection.
