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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 15-07-22
CONTENTS
[01] Second package of prior actions to plenum; vote to be held around
midnight
[02] Austerity only can't work, 3 top German economists tell ANA-MPA
[03] Greek public debt remains the highest in the EU in Q1
[01] Second package of prior actions to plenum; vote to be held around
midnight
ANA-MPA -- The draft bill on the prior actions demanded by Greece's
creditors was passed with a large majority by MPs in a joint session of
four relevant Parliament committees on Wednesday. It was approved with
the support of ruling SYRIZA-ANEL MPs, main opposition New Democracy,
Potami and PASOK. It was opposed by Golden Dawn and the Communist Party
of Greece (KKE).
The fast-tracked legislation, which will now go before the plenum for
debate and be voted on around midnight, includes changes to the Code for
Civil Procedure and transposition of the Bank Recovery and Resolution
Directive (BRRD) into national law. The two measures are among prior
actions demanded by Eurozone leaders in the July 12 summit agreement in
order to begin negotiations on a third bailout for Greece.
[02] Austerity only can't work, 3 top German economists tell ANA-MPA
ANA-MPA -- Three of Germany's top economists were dubious that the new
bailout programme imposed on Greece by its EU partners can work if it
continues to focus only on austerity, in interviews with the ANA-MPA's
Antonis Polychronakis published on Wednesday. Without investment in the
real economy, they agreed that it would probably fail to bring about
Greece's recovery.
According to Heiner Flassbeck, a former state secretary in the German
Federal Ministry of Finance, advisor to former finance minister Oskar
Lafontaine, and subsequently chief of Macroeconomics and Development of
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva
until 2012, the programme was not only humiliating but also nonsensical.
Flassbeck, who co-authored the book "Only Germany can rescue the euro:
the last act is starting" with rebel SYRIZA MP and explicit euro exit
supporter Costas Lapavitsas, said the programme would only make the
Greek economy sink deeper and fail to achieve any of the desired targets.
"There is no simple transition to another currency from one day to the
next but if I was in the Greek government I would start planning now on
exactly how, very specifically, an exit [from the euro] might be carried
out in the coming months," he said. Bremen-based German economist
Rudolf Hickel, considered among the country's top five economists by
the magazine FAZ, was also pessimistic about the outlook if creditors
continued with the "avalanche system" of new debts to service the old,
without pumping some money into Greece's economy and infrastructure.
"The continued harsh austerity imposed by the three institutions,
with cuts on a social level and increases in mass taxation, will lead
to the economy shrinking further and reduced demand to further loss of
jobs," Hickel said. On the positive side, he noted that there finally
appeared to be a willingness to pump fresh money into the economy and
infrastructure, such as the 12.5 billion euros from the privatisation
fund and the 35 billion euros from EU structural funds. "The planned
privatisations of public property are wrong, however, because the state
property could secure infrastructure projects and constant revenues. The
revenue from the sales will soon be burned up against the mountain of
debt," he said, adding that the compromise reached had only bought
a little time. "A new discussion on Grexit is visible...basically
because economic aid is once again being given only for the financing of
overdue loans. We remain in the avalanche system: new debts financing
old debts." He stressed that the creditor institutions must finally
focus on rebuilding Greece's economy and boosting infrastructure and
pointed to elements that were blatantly absent from the agreement, such
as action to fight poverty, a commitment to increase emergency funding
from the European Central Bank to replenish ATMs and a restructuring of
Greek debts to the ECB and IMF. Prof. Gustav Horn, the director of the
Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) at the Hans-Boeckler-Foundation,
was also clear that the new agreement could only work if investments in
Greece's economy had a more drastic effect than the latest round of cuts.
"The agreement achieved between the EU governments and Greece had as its
price a huge loss of mutual trust. Economically, at least, it can offer
only a limited possibility for the recovery of the Greek economy. This
will only happen, however, if the investment components of the agreement
are exploited quickly and drastically. If, however, the rescue strategy
is confined to an enhanced continuation of cuts to the state budget,
then this programme will fail, like the ones before it," Horn said.
[03] Greek public debt remains the highest in the EU in Q1
ANA-MPA -- The Greek public debt reached 168.8 pct of the country's
GDP in the first quarter of 2015, remaining the highest among EU
member-states, Eurostat said on Wednesday.
The EU executive's statistics office, in a report, said that the Greek
public debt fell 5.5 pct compared with the same period in 2014. In the
Eurozone, the public debt/GDP rate grew to 92.9 pct in the January-March
period, from 91.9 pct last year, while in the EU the debt/GDP rate grew
to 88.2 pct from 86.2 pct over the same periods, respectively. Bulgaria
recorded the biggest percentage increase in the first quarter (+10 pct).
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