Syntagma Square, the focal point of Greek politics, burst into flames Wednesday night as the country’s parliament voted on a painful series of austerity and reform measures.
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The third bailout is worth about 85 billion euros in loans over three years.
Greece’s parliament has approved the bailout package presented by prime minister Alexis Tsipras.
He has also lost support from a significant number of lawmakers in his left-wing Syriza party, and needed help from the opposition to get it through parliament.
“These negotiations failed because the creditors refused the only issue that would put Greece on a viable path again”, Varoufakis said, “the issue of debt relief”.
“I don’t know, nobody knows at the moment how this should be possible without a haircut”, he said.
But the Prime Minister said sorting out the problems of the single currency was a “matter for eurozone countries”.
The bailout of Greece took two big strides forward Friday as German lawmakers overwhelmingly gave their backing to another financial rescue and the European Union confirmed it would get Athens enough money to avoid an imminent debt default.
The recent weeks have been tumultuous for Greece after having rejected the austerity measures demanded by its creditors, in a referendum.
Eurozone finance ministers are due to discuss the vote in a conference call later in the day on how to keep Greece’s banks from collapsing.
In an open letter published by local media, 109 members of the 201 Syriza party committee members said the bailout terms were “not compatible with our ideals and the principles of the left“.
Greece is less than 2% of the economy of the eurozone, but earlier phases of the six-year-old Greek crisis created financial pressure for other indebted countries who found their market borrowing costs rising. Some in the crowd hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, who responded with tear gas and pepper spray, temporarily turning the scene into fiery chaos.
With another austerity vote planned next week, Voutsis cautioned that the level of dissent shown Thursday had fallen just short of toppling Tsipras’ 6-month-old government, which was elected on a pledge to free Greece from debilitating austerity.
European Central Bank head Mario Draghi says emergency credit to Greek banks has been raised today.
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The European Commission has submitted a formal proposal to use an EU-wide rescue fund to provide bridging loans to allow Athens to meet upcoming debt payments to the European Central Bank (ECB) and global Monetary Fund (IMF).
