Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras of Greece has said he is sticking to plans to roll back austerity and
rejecting an international bailout extension.
Mr Tsipras's far-left
Syriza party won elections last month on a promise to end austerity measures. EU
officials have rejected his efforts to renegotiate Greece's bailout terms.
"The bailout
failed," Mr Tsipras said on Sunday, in his first major speech to
parliament since becoming prime minister. "The new government is not
justified in asking for an extension... because it cannot ask for an extension
of mistakes. After five years of bailout barbarity, our people cannot take any
more."
'Humanitarian crisis'
In last month's
elections, Syriza fell just short of an outright majority and formed a
coalition government with the right-wing Independent Greeks.
On Sunday, Mr Tsipras
said the government's "irreversible decision is to implement in full our
pre-elections pledges". The first priority, he said, was "tackling
the big wounds of the bailout, tackling the humanitarian crisis".
That included giving
free food and electricity to those worst affected by the economic crisis and
ending an unpopular annual levy on private property.
Among other commitments outlined on Sunday were:
- A gradual rise in
the minimum wage to €751 (£557; $850) by 2016.
- Payment of a bonus
to low-income pensioners.
- Reinstatement of
public sector employees "fired illegally".
- The creation of a
new national broadcaster.
Two of the measures -
raising the minimum wage and restoring a tax-free threshold to €12,000 -
contravene reforms made previously as conditions for receiving bailout money. Mr
Tsipras also announced a number of measures aimed at cutting costs or raising revenue,
including.
- A new tax on large
properties.
- A special portfolio
to oversee fight against corruption and tax evasion.
- A pension fund using
revenues from natural resources.
- Cutting ministry
cars and government aero planes.
The Greek prime minister
also repeated demands that Germany - Greece's biggest creditor - pay
reparations for World War Two and repay a loan that the Nazis forced the Bank
of Greece to pay when they occupied Greece.
Greece had "a
moral obligation to our people, to history, to all European peoples who fought
and gave their blood against Nazism", he said.
Diplomatic tour
Greece's current
programme of loans ends on 28 February. A final €7.2bn is still to be
negotiated, but Greece wants permission to issue additional short-term debt
while it seeks a new deal.
Mr Tsipras said Greece
wanted to service its debt. "If our peers want so, too, they are invited
to come to the table of dialogue so we can discuss how to make it viable,"
he added.
Mr Tsipras and his
Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, went on a diplomatic tour this week to try
to reassure eurozone leaders about their plans.
However, Jeroen
Dijsselbloem, who chairs the Eurogroup made up of eurozone finance ministers,
said on Friday that Greece had to apply for a bailout extension if it wanted
continued backing from the eurozone. "We don't do bridging loans," he
said.
The European Central
Bank has also issued a statement saying Greek banks could no longer access ECB
credit by using Greek government bonds or bonds guaranteed by the government.
Greek debt stands at
more than €320bn, or about 174% of Greece's economic output. Eurozone finance
ministers are due to meet on Wednesday to discuss Greece's debt proposals. Mr
Varoufakis told Italian television on Sunday that the euro was as
"fragile" as a house of cards. "If you take out the Greek card
the others will collapse," he said.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου