Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-09-09

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PASOK leader addresses TIF

[02] SYRIZA head meets with Immigrants Forum

[01] PASOK leader addresses TIF

On education, he said ?expenditures will increase to 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with one billion euros more, already from the 2008 budget of the new PASOK government.?

He said PASOKâs proposals on research and production were: priority in the subsidy of companies of environmental technology, tax relief to companies for investments in research aimed at environmental and energy technology, viable construction in all public works, improvement of energy performance in all public buildings, increase of funds for research, with priority to environmental and energy issues, to agricultural innovative practices and methods for the improvement of the management of forest and farm regions, drafting of environmental management plans in the public and public sector and complete briefing of environmental information.

On the strengthening on entrepreneurship, he said particular emphasis will be given to extroversion and competitiveness which require: strong Greek Groups with multinational presence, radical improvement of business environment and strong support of Greek businesses outside of Greece.

He noted that his party's policies for the support of business foresee: reduction in the time of issue of permits, support of high scale investments which substantially change the regionsâ economy through tax exemptions linked with investment, tax relief to profit-making businesses, the creation of jobs and tax exemption for five years to new businesses in mountainous and rural regions.

On unemployment, Papandreou said that ?PASOKâs road is work for all? and committed himself to: real support of the unemployed and the substantial increase of the unemployment subsidy to 70% of the basic salary.

Present at his address was Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.

[02] SYRIZA head meets with Immigrants Forum

He termed immigrants as "people without a vote and without papers", expressing at the same time his satisfaction for "their disposition to offer voluntary work in handling problems resulting from last month's wildfires."

For SYRIZA, Alavanos noted, immigrants "are part of our country's political and social reality and we will continue our efforts, in the same manner we acted until now, to have simplified laws without bureaucratic processes which will issue residence and work permits as well as the immigrants' right to acquire Greek nationality after completion of a five-year residence and after being born in this country, just as is the case in many European countries."

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