(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti). People buy fruit at a market in central Athens, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. It was another victory for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who made clear before the vote that he’d regard it as a vote of confidence in his six-month-old government.
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In exchange for up to 86 billion euros ($94 billion), Greece accepted pension cuts, increased value-added tax – a regressive levy that disproportionately affects the poor – an overhaul of collective bargaining and public-spending limits.
According to local media, Tsipras addressed the Syriza parliamentary group at a session that took place right before the Greek parliament started a debate on Greece’s bailout agreement.
European Central Bank head Mario Draghi faces a blizzard of questions about Greece at his news conference Thursday.
The European Commission said today that if Greece is to get the short-term cash it desperately needs to pay its coming debts – including a €3.5bn ECB loan repayment due next Monday – the EFSM may be the only plausible fund it can mobilise in time. The fund warned that it may not be able to participate int the new $96 billion bailout deal, unless Greece’s finances are brought under control.
Tsipras has faced strident dissent even from some of his top ministers, with Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis saying in a post on his ministry’s website that the deal the prime minister reached was “unacceptable” and calling on him to withdraw it.
Before the austerity vote, some 12,000 demonstrators had gathered outside parliament in the biggest protest against the government since Tsipras won elections in late January.
The violence involved about 200 youths who hurled firebombs and rocks at riot police, and smashed office windows and set fire to trash bins.
Hard-liners in Tsipras’ own Cabinet and his radical leftist Syriza party are in open revolt.
“We had a very specific choice: A deal we largely disagreed with, or a chaotic default”, he told parliament ahead of the vote. Some 30 lawmakers from the ruling Syriza party have threatened to oppose the document.
The publication of the report has raised new uncertainties as to whether the IMF will agree to contribute to a new bailout fund, and what effect it will have on how Greek politicians vote.
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said it could have found itself in a much better situation now had it clinched a deal back then, but Greece got its timing all wrong during the bailout negotiations.
“I will not run away from my responsibilities”, he said. “It was a decision that will weigh on me for the rest of my life”, Tsakalotos said. “Nothing was certain and nothing is”, he said as the debate kicked off.
“We don’t believe in it, but we are forced to adopt it”, Tsipras said.
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The president of the Greek parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou, a Syriza hardliner declared the bailout package was an attack on Greek sovereignty.
