{"id":390143,"date":"2010-03-04T12:06:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T17:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21005166"},"modified":"2010-03-04T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T17:06:38","slug":"greek-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/390143","title":{"rendered":"Greek drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

GREECE, you may recall, faces a March deadline (of sorts) to convince European finance ministers that its budget plans will be sufficient to cut its deficit this year by about 4% of GDP. Earlier this week, the Greek government announced a series of measures designed to do just that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

[Previously announced] measures include freezing civil-service wages, cutting public-sector entitlements by 10% on average, increasing fuel taxes, and closing dozens of tax loopholes for certain professions\u2014including some civil servants\u2014who now pay less than their fair share of taxes.<\/p>\n

Greece’s European partners aren’t persuaded. Since the EU issued its rhetorical support for Greece Feb. 12, EU members such as Germany and France, as well as others, have demanded that Greece take further steps to close its budget gap before they would commit to any specific financial support for the country.<\/p>\n

According to one official, the new package is likely to include an increase in the current value-added tax rate of 19% by two percentage points, more cuts in civil-service entitlements, a freeze in pensions and higher duties on luxury items, such as boats and expensive cars.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Quick on the heels of the new plan’s release, Greece conducted<\/a> a debt sale of some \u20ac5 billion in 10-year bonds, which turned out to be significantly oversubscribed. That suggests that markets haven’t tired of Greek debt just yet (though a high interest rate\u2014roughly twice that on similar German debt\u2014were necessary to bring the buyers in).<\/p>\n

But now comes the crucial test: can the austerity plan stick<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Greek demonstrators took over the Finance Ministry building in central Athens, blocking streets in the city center…as unions stepped up protests against government deficit cuts.<\/p>\n

\n

In Athens, about 200 members of the PAME union group, aligned with the Communist Party of Greece, occupied the six- story ministry building today while protesters took over the nearby General Accounting Office, according to a police spokeswoman. Another group blocked a central road in downtown Athens, snarling traffic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, the Greek government answers not to European leaders but to Greek voters. Greek officials are pleading with Europe (the Germans especially) to go ahead and announce a financial aid package in response to austerity steps, but so far there is no help on the horizon. Can Greek leaders keep domestic anger over the budget cuts in check until European aid arrives, or will popular unrest blow up the austerity package before the Germans can be sold? Tune in next week to find out.<\/p>\n

For more on the brewing battles over who should bear the brunt of the deficit reduction pain, check out this week’s Leader on the subject, now up<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GREECE, you may recall, faces a March deadline (of sorts) to convince European finance ministers that its budget plans will be sufficient to cut its deficit this year by about 4% of GDP. Earlier this week, the Greek government announced a series of measures designed to do just that: [Previously announced] measures include freezing civil-service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}