Athens, 31/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - Forcing through measures to win disbursement of the next batch of international aid has again cost the Greek coalition a further MP. Nikitas Kaklamanis was kicked out of the group for failing to back all the measures, meaning that the coalition only has a majority of two votes (152 of the total 300). Two MPs from another coalition party, PASOK, refused to back all the measures. George Papandreous voted against the recapitalisation of banks. The head of PASOK, Evangelos Venizelos, published a statement to the effect that hypocrisy and political power games have brought Greece to the current situation and bank recapitalisation framework was the result of bitter talks with the troika of lenders (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund).
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras welcomed the vote as a huge step towards a Greece of the future, for young people and all other Greek people alike. The vote paves the way for the disbursement of the next batch of just over €8 billion, said the head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, in an interview with Bloomberg on Sunday.
Eurozone finance ministers will be meeting on Tuesday to discuss the Greek structural adjustment programme and the technical-level agreement reached a fortnight ago after eight months of troika assessments of the situation.
The vote narrowly escaped being postponed because of a motion of no-confidence in Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras by opposition party Syriza. The motion was declared anti-constitutional because Syriza attempted something similar in December and only one motion of no-confidence is allowed in every six months. When the motion was rejected by the chairman of the Greek parliament, the head of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, lodged a motion of no-confidence against the speaker, which will be debated on Monday.
More than 10,000 people demonstrated outside the Greek parliament in Syntagma Square on Sunday and the underground station was closed as a security measure. The measures voted through include provisions to lift barriers to competition.
In the interview with Bloomberg, Dijsselbloem said that the eurozone finance ministers would examine the question of the Greek debt before the summer break. He said they were prepared to do more, such as extending the maturity of loans and reducing interest rates, depending on what happens to economic growth. Dijsselbloem recommended starting with a cautious approach to issuing new sovereign bonds, beginning with short-term bonds and gradually moving on to longer ones. He said it was good to start issuing bonds again this year. (EL)