The Greek prime minister has toughened his austerity program to include a blanket civil service pay freeze, as the EU readied plans to tightly monitor Athens’ performance and possibly demand even more cutbacks.
In a live televised address on Tuesday evening, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would also hike fuel taxes, increase retirement ages and speed up an overhaul of the country’s tax system, which will be presented in parliament next week rather than at the end of the month.
“This is an effort to stop the country’s course toward the cliff,” Papandreou said. “Our country is at the center of a speculative attack … It is being treated as the weak link of the eurozone.”
His speech came a day before the European Commission is scheduled to issue an assessment of Greece’s plan to curb its runaway budget deficit, which is currently more than four times the EU limit of 3 percent.
Papandreou, who said Greece faced an “unprecedented crisis,” had previously said civil servants earning more than 2,000 euros (US$2,800) a month would have their salaries frozen, but he has now expanded that to include all civil servants, who will get no raises beyond seniority increases.
He pledged to go after tax evaders and those who use offshore accounts to avoid declaring income, and said those who could afford to pay more would be forced to do so.
Athens has resisted pressure from the EU to impose the sort of drastic spending cuts taken by fellow eurozone member Ireland, which include civil service pay cuts.
But measures such as salary freezes, higher fuel taxes and an increase in retirement ages will hit people in the middle and lower income brackets, risking a backlash from unions that have so far been relatively restrained. The civil servants’ union had previously declared a strike for next Wednesday, while customs and tax officials are set to walk off the job this week.
“The government’s policies are clearly aimed exclusively at raising money and once again lay the burden on those who have been exploited for years — workers and pensioners,” said Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary of the Greek civil servants union.
“These policies will lead nowhere,” he said.
Farmers have already been blocking major highways across the country on and off for more than two weeks, demanding financial help to overcome low food prices. The government has insisted there is no money to be spared.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS