A EUROGROUP (eurozone’s finance ministers) marathon meeting on Greece ended on midnight Saturday without a decision as the French and German ministers fell out.
The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble stated that the Greek government’s proposals for a third bail-out of austerity was inadequate and that there was no trust that the Greek government could carry out the austerity reforms.
Schauble, with support from Germany’s satellite eastern European states, proposed a 5-year exit of Greece from the euro and a restructuring of its debt; alternatively, Greece should sell 50bn euros worth of assets. The French Finance Minister Michel Sapin stated that the Greek government’s proposals were the basis for an agreement.
The European Union leaders’ meeting due for yesterday evening was cancelled. Another Eurogroup meeting was set for midday yesterday. In the early hours of Saturday the Greek government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, a coalition of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and of ANEL (right wing nationalists), had won a Vouli (Greek parliament) vote authorising the Greek Finance Minister Efklidis Tsakalotos to present to the Eurogroup an austerity plan despite the fact that in the referendum of 5th July the Greek people had rejected by 61 per cent such a plan.
All the opposition bourgeois parties backed the SYRIZA-ANEL government’s plan which got the votes of 251 deputies out of a total of 300. But it was a most pyrrhic victory as 17 SYRIZA deputies refused to back the government. Two voted against, eight Left Platform deputies abstained, and seven did not take part in the vote. All of them stated, separately, that they were not going to vote for yet more barbaric austerity measures.
Those abstained included two government ministers and the popular Vouli Speaker, Zoe Konstantopoulou. Fifteen other SYRIZA deputies who voted for the government, in a joint statement said that they were in solidarity with those who voted against or abstained, that they too are against the austerity plan, and that they had only voted for the government so that it does not lose its parliamentary majority.
On Friday evening over 10,000 people staged a ‘NO to austerity’ rally in front of the Vouli in Athens. Only some few hundred of SYRIZA supporters participated.
Another mass rally was scheduled for yesterday evening.
