Returning to Athens on Monday with a new deal for a bailout package that would keep Greece in the eurozone, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is facing strong opposition to the agreement within his own government, as well as protests in the streets.
After long hours of talks on Sunday and Monday with eurozone leaders, Tsipras might have some more sleepless nights ahead, as now the Greek parliament needs to approve all of the laws implementing the reforms by an EU-imposed deadline of July 15 in order to receive billions of euros in aid.
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The deal has already been dubbed the most intrusive EU program
for a bailout in history, with some Greek officials calling it an
excessive price to pay. Former Greek ambassador Leonidas
Chrysanthopoulos called it “too tough, too late, the death of
Greeks.”
“These absurd measures do not reflect the EU we entered back
in 1981. It has actually made Greece a colony of Germany, not to
say of the European Union,” he told RT, adding that
“despite the concessions the EU has made to Greece, the
country is far from being out of the crisis.”
Panos Kammenos, leader of right-wing coalition partner
Independent Greeks and Greece’s Defense Minister, said his party
was against the agreement. The proposed deal is a “coup
staged by Germany and other countries,” he said, as cited by
AP.
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MORE: ‘Greece is colony of Germany and EU’ (OP-ED)
“This deal introduced many new issues...we cannot agree with
it,” Kammenos said after meeting with Alexis Tsipras, whose
six-month-old government is struggling to maintain its majority
in parliament.
Other Greek officials also put the blame on Germany. “Germany
unfortunately for a third time in 100 years is attempting to
destroy Europe,” Nikos Filis, the parliamentary spokesman
for Syriza lawmakers, said on local television, as quoted by
Reuters.
The radical Left Platform, a faction of Tsipras’s ruling Syriza
party, called the deal a “humiliation of Greece,”
Financial Times reported on Monday.
The unpopular measures accepted by Tsipras for debt-stricken Greece have also angered the Greek people, who voted against further austerity reforms in a recent national referendum. Hundreds of protesters turned out to decry the agreement reached by Eurogroup members and the Greek PM on Monday, demonstrating their outrage by burning a Syriza flag outside the Hellenic Parliament in central Athens.
“They are trying to show that there is no other way. And the Greek people are not going to stand for it, they didn’t vote ‘no’ in the referendum for nothing. They didn’t vote for a ‘yes’ to become a ‘no.’ They voted for ending austerity,” an Athens resident told RT’s Daniel Hawkins.
READ MORE: 5 key points in landmark Greek debt accord
Infuriated by the possibility of new austerity measures,
protesters carried posters that read “Agreement equals
submission for the people and humiliation for the left” and
“NO to the robbers of EU, ECB, IMF and their local
collaborators” among others, Ruptly reported on Monday.
Justifying his acceptance of unpopular measures in Brussels,
including pension reform, reform of product markets and
privatization, the Syriza leader said that the agreement was
complex, but the bailout would allow Greece to avoid the transfer
of its state property abroad, as well as financial strangulation
and destruction of the financial system.
Western critics of the agreement said the deal could trigger
social and political unrest across the EU, or could even spell
“the end of democracy in Europe.”
“It makes matters worse not just for Greece – the social and
political pain will be intense, never mind the financial and
economic pain. But it makes it worse for the eurozone, because in
order for Greece to be able to repay, she has to be able to
generate income. And by starving the economy to death you just
really don’t ensure a future income,” Ann Pettifor, Director
of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) told RT.