Brussels, 09/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 9 May, warning shots were addressed to Greek politicians across the board from the rest of Europe. The left at the European Parliament and elsewhere calls for the EU to answer the concerns of ordinary Europeans - concerns that were visible during the recent elections in France and Greece (see separate article). In Athens, there has not yet been any progress in forming a coalition government of politicians prepared to support the second financial bailout and the strings attached.
Wolfgang Schauble, the German minister for foreign affairs, said that Germany would like Greece to remain in the eurozone, but whether it will or not is not in Germany's power. Similar comments were made by the European Central Bank where Asmussen, one of the two German representatives on the Governing Council, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that Greece should realise that there is no alternative to the reform programme that has been agreed upon if it wants to remain a member of the eurozone. At a forum organised by WDR, the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said that Greece respecting the second bailout was a matter of credibility for the whole of the EU. He said the programme was not made up solely of austerity measures, but also contained structural reforms and investment to make the Greek economy competitive again and any alternative would be even worse for the ordinary Greek.
The head of the far left party in Greece, Alexis Tsipras, said that if the euro and the eurozone are under threat, it is first and foremost because of the austerity measures that have already been applied in Greece, which has been treated as a guinea pig. Now that the head of the conservative party New Democracy, Antonis Samara, has given up trying to form a government, it is Tsipras' turn. (MB/transl.fl)