Greece Reassumes Negotiations Amid Austerity Anger

Almost four years after Athens’s debt crisis exploded – forcing EU mandarins to rewrite the book of fiscal rules – mistrust, anger and thinly disguised panic have returned to strain Greece’s relations with its lenders at the EU, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“They are pressing us to adopt policies that are crazy,” confided a senior government official as the finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, relaunched “intensive negotiations” with creditors over a looming budget black hole. “If we are forced to implement so much as half a measure more there will be a revolution in this country. Are they blind?”

In Brussels, another spokesman said: “It’s bad. It’s as if we are back in 2010 again.”

Prime minister Antonis Samaras’s fragile coalition now faces what insiders are calling its toughest month since assuming power in June 2012. With a wafer-thin majority, and an increasingly hostile anti-austerity opposition, the government must pass an array of highly controversial bills, starting with next year’s budget, to be presented to parliament on Thursday.

via The Guardian

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