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Greek Broadcaster Fights Closure

June 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The administrative court, the Council of State, is expected to rule on the appeal Monday.

A decision in favor of the workers, who have been operating underground broadcasts of Greek news through satellite streams since ERT was pulled off the air in a surprise government decision on Tuesday, could lead to ERT’s signal being restored temporarily, until the decision could be reviewed in a hearing by the Council of State that would be scheduled for September.

Meanwhile, a Greek prosecutor, acting at the behest of the country’s finance minister, has begun an investigation into ERT’s finances, looking for signs of mismanaged funds.

Whatever the court verdict on the workers’ appeal, Monday will be a critical day for the country’s conservative prime minister, Antonis Samaras. He is to meet in the afternoon with the leaders of the two junior partners in his increasingly fragile coalition, socialist Pasok and the moderate Democratic Left. They have vehemently opposed his decision to shut down ERT as part of a broader cost-cutting drive imposed by Greece’s international creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Although a court decision vindicating the laid-off ERT employees might be considered an embarrassment for Mr. Samaras, political analysis on Greek blogs and news Web sites on Friday suggested that such an outcome might less damaging to his image than if he were forced to reverse his decision under political pressure.

In a speech before members of his conservative New Democracy party’s youth arm on Friday, Mr. Samaras suggested a compomise in an apparent bid to head off a government crisis. His proposal — for the “immediate creation of a cross-party committee to hire a small number of staff so that public television can immediately resume broadcasting” — was rejected within minutes by Pasok, which said the proposal “does not constitute a response to what Pasok has said.”

The political upheaval came amid reports from Brussels that the disbursement of the next tranche of rescue funding for Greece, a sum of about $4.4 billion, was expected to be released next week.

Earlier on Friday, a Greek Finance Ministry official said that European officials had approved the disbursement, subject to a final endorsement by euro zone finance ministers. That decision, the official said, had been largely influenced by the government’s decision to save money by closing ERT.

The state broadcaster, condemned by Mr. Samaras earlier this week as ‘’an emblem of lack of transparency and waste,’’ is to be the focus of a criminal investigation ordered on Thursday by the finance minister, Yannis Stournaras. Greece’s corruption prosecutor, Eleni Raikou, on Friday assigned two deputies to review all the employment and procurement contracts issued by ERT over the past decade for signs of mismanagement and waste.

The scale of suspected misuse of money within ERT over the years remains unclear. But, addressing Parliament on Friday, Mr Stournaras said the broadcaster’s ‘‘finances and viewing figures were very poor.’’

‘’I don’t want to raise tensions in the current climate,’’ he said, ‘’but when the time comes I will present the statistics.’’

Dismissed ERT workers, who have occupied the broadcaster’s headquarters in a suburb of Athens since ERT’s signal was cut on Tuesday night, continued to operate underground broadcasts of Greek news on Friday. Those streams were picked up Thursday evening by the the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public service media organizations in 56 countries, and re-transmitted via satellite link to Greece. The move had symbolic, rather than practical, value as only a few hundred thousand out of some 11 million Greeks have satellite connections; most have been following ERT’s pirate broadcast via online news Web sites.

The head of the European Broadcasting Union, Jean-Paul Philippot, who was in Athens on Friday, said he would ask the Greek government to restore the ERT signal. ‘’The reason we are here is because this has never happened before,’’ he told a media conference in the old headquarters of ERT. ‘’No European country has ever cut its broadcaster’s signal.’’

Mr. Stournaras had warned Thursday that any other television channel retransmitting the pirate broadcast of former ERT employees would be prosecuted. The announcement was apparently aimed at the Communist Party’s channel, called 902 TV, which had been carrying the underground broadcast but reverted to normal programming after the ministry’s warning. ‘’This is not a country where everyone does whatever they want,’’ Mr. Stournaras said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/world/europe/greek-broadcaster-fights-closure.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Greece Votes to Raise Tax on Higher Earners

January 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

ATHENS — Greek lawmakers voted late Friday to increase taxes on middle- to high-income earners, self-employed professionals and businesses despite vehement objections by the political opposition and several ruling coalition deputies who said austerity-weary citizens should not be subjected to further pain.

The change to the tax code, one of a long line of pledges Greece has made to international creditors in exchange for continued bailout money, passed comfortably with at least 162 of the ruling coalition’s 163 members backing the articles in a roll call that came after two days of heated debate in the 300-seat Parliament.

The fragile coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras hopes to raise 2.3 billion euros in much-needed revenue from the new law, which increases the amount of income tax paid by those earning more than 20,000 euros a year, trims tax benefits for having children, revokes tax breaks for farmers and increases corporate tax to 26 percent from 20 percent. The new law also increases the amount of income tax paid by self-employed professionals like doctors and electricians, who are widely perceived as not paying their share by understating their income. New rules abolishing a tax-exempt threshold means the self-employed would be taxed from the first euro they earn.

Defending the bill in Parliament, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras called it “a vital fiscal reform” that would avert additional across-the-board cuts to workers and pensioners.

“Every euro collected in tax revenue is one euro saved from salaries, pensions and social benefits,” he said. He rejected a flurry of amendments from members of two junior parties in the coalition and the opposition, noting that such costly changes would throw Greece off the path to economic health and put further bailout money in jeopardy.

Calling Mr. Stournaras a “political terrorist,” Panagiotis Lafazanis, a lawmaker of the leftist party Syriza, which opposes the terms of Greece’s bailouts, said the tax bill was “the nail in the coffin of social justice,” adding that “Greek society is more important” than its creditors.

Other opposition lawmakers berated the government for planning to impose additional measures in the coming days, including tighter control of the budgets of ministries and state utilities, the reduction of parliamentary employees’ wages in line with cuts to the wages of other civil servants, and the revision of Greece’s second loan agreement with foreign creditors, in the form of special edicts that do not require parliamentary approval. The loan agreement amendment surrenders the country’s rights to protect its assets from creditors, Syriza complained.

Since 2010, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have committed to two bailouts for Greece worth 240 billion euros in exchange for austerity measures that have hurt Greek living standards, pushed unemployment close to 27 percent and fueled angry street protests.

The new law is to be followed in spring by a thorough overhaul of the tax system that will introduce jail terms for large-scale evaders instead of the suspended sentences handed down now.

Greece’s failure to crack down on widespread tax evasion came into sharp focus over the holidays after prosecutors revealed that the names of three relatives of the former finance minister George Papaconstantinou had been removed from a list of some 2,000 wealthy Greeks with Swiss bank accounts. Parliament is to vote next Thursday on whether Mr. Papaconstantinou, and his successor as finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, who leads the coalition’s Socialist party, will face a parliamentary inquiry on whether they should be indicted on charges of criminal tampering and breach of duty.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/business/global/greek-lawmakers-back-tax-increase.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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German Lawmakers Back Latest Round of Aid for Greece

November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

BERLIN — Lawmakers in Germany’s lower house of Parliament easily passed the next round of financial support for Greece on Friday, despite growing doubt among members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition and opposition parties that the measures will be sufficient to resolve the Greek problem.

As expected, a clear majority of 473 out of 584 lawmakers casting ballots voted in favor of the package of measures agreed to by European finance ministers and international lenders last week that will unlock loan installments totaling €43.7 billion, or $56.7 billion. One hundred lawmakers voted against the measure and 11 abstained.

Germany is one of Greece’s largest creditors and support from Berlin is crucial for the success of the program. Yet with a parliamentary election scheduled for Sept. 22, German politicians from all sides have been reluctant to take on extra financial burdens.

Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, defended the latest bailout package and praised the restructuring efforts that have been made by the government of Antonis Samaras, prime minister of Greece. But he warned that the current discussion of writing down Greek debt would sap Athens’s drive to continue with the painful course of reforms that Germany has required in exchange for more financial assistance.

“If we say that the debt will be forgiven, then the readiness to save in exchange for further help is weakened. Consequently, this is the false incentive,” Mr. Schäuble said. “If we want to help Greece along this difficult path, then we must go forward step by step.”

The current package aims to cut Greek debt, currently estimated at 175 percent of gross domestic product, down to 124 percent by 2020. Mr. Schäuble acknowledged for the first time that the bailout would cut into Germany’s federal budget, but warned that failure to approve it could be disastrous for the nation and the rest of Europe.

Already the 17 European Union nations using the common currency are in recession. Unemployment in the bloc has also climbed to 11.7 percent, its highest rate since 1995, according to official European figures released Friday.

While the German economy remained largely immune to the suffering on its borders, the most recent official figures show growth slowing and investor confidence dipping.

Against this backdrop, Ms. Merkel has been able to quell calls from within own her center-right coalition for Greece to leave the euro zone, by insisting that the consequences of such a step would be far more dire for Germany than providing more financial assistance.

Ms. Merkel’s government rests on an alliance of her own conservative Christian Democratic Union with the sister party for the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, and the liberal pro-business Free Democrats. It was not immediately clear if a fully majority of her government had supported the bailout measure.

The leading opposition parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, criticized Ms. Merkel’s government for taking too long to agree to help Greece and for failing to level with German taxpayers about the true cost of the effort, but nevertheless backed the package.

“We will vote for it because we don’t want our reliability as European partners left in any doubt,” Ms. Merkel’s main challenger for the election, Peer Steinbrück of the Social Democrats, told German public television ahead of Friday’s vote. “It has nothing to do with the government.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/business/global/german-finance-minister-urges-lawmakers-to-approve-greek-debt-deal.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Greek Leaders Reach Deal to Form a New Government

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The agreement on Sunday appeared to break a political deadlock that had paralyzed Greece in the face of an acute financial crisis that threatened to infect other euro-zone nations, especially Italy. European leaders see the debt-relief deal struck with Greece on Oct. 26 as crucial to containing the crisis in Greece and insulating Italy, a much larger economy whose political leaders have also struggled to cut budgets and deal with heavy debt.

Yields on Italian bonds — the price Italy must pay to borrow money on international markets — rose on Monday to over 6.6 percent, the highest since the introduction of the euro more than a decade ago, news reports said.

But in a statement reported by the ANSA news agency, Mr. Berlusconi said talk of his resignation before a crucial parliamentary vote on Tuesday was “without foundation.”

The agreement in Greece could not have come soon enough for its European partners, who have pressed the country hard to forge a broader political consensus behind the debt deal. But it was not clear whether the agreement would provide the certainty that skeptical investors are demanding to calm turbulent financial markets.

The debt deal requires that the Greek Parliament pass a new round of deeply unpopular austerity measures, including layoffs of government workers, in a climate of growing social unrest. It also calls for permanent foreign monitoring in Greece to ensure that it makes good on its pledges of structural changes to revitalize its economy, a requirement that many Greeks see as an affront to national sovereignty.

With a narrow and eroding majority in Parliament, Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist government found that it could not unify to push through such measures on its own, but Antonis Samaras, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party, opposed many of the debt deal’s provisions and demanded Mr. Papandreou’s resignation and a snap election. After days of frantic political wrangling, Mr. Papandreou survived a confidence vote in Parliament on Friday, setting the stage for Sunday’s compromise.

The new unity government, in which the major parties would share power, is widely expected to be led by a nonpolitician and to govern for several months, long enough to carry out the debt deal and pass a budget for 2011. The name of the new prime minister and the composition of the new cabinet were not expected to be announced until Monday, when the leaders will meet again, according to a statement Sunday night by the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, who moderated the talks on Sunday.

In a statement early Monday morning, the Greek Finance Ministry said that delegations from the Socialist Party and New Democracy met on Sunday “to discuss the time frame of the actions” to implement the debt deal, and added that the two parties regarded Feb. 19 as “the most appropriate date for elections.”

In reaching the agreement, Mr. Papandreou agreed to meet Mr. Samaras’s demand that he step down as prime minister, while Mr. Samaras agreed to back the debt deal and a seven-point plan of priorities proposed by Mr. Papandreou that would essentially commit the new government to the terms of the debt deal.

Mr. Samaras is not expected to play a role in the unity government, but would be New Democracy’s candidate for prime minister in the general election.

In many ways, a new interim government for Greece buys time for European leaders to put together a stronger bailout mechanism that would protect larger economies from the risk of default, chief among them Italy. High debt, low growth and Mr. Berlusconi’s diminishing credibility have made that nation increasingly vulnerable.

“The decision is very positive, because it will appease the markets and because it shows that Greek authorities are doing what foreign leaders want them to do — to get on with implementing the conditions for the E.U. debt deal,” said Athanassios Papandropoulos, an economist and commentator for the conservative Greek newspaper Estia.

Landon Thomas Jr. contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b3f9d4ecb7d12beda625c512357188ed

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Leaders in Greece Agree to Deal to Form a Unity Government

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The agreement appeared to break a political deadlock that had paralyzed Greece in the face of an acute financial crisis that threatened to infect other euro-zone nations, especially Italy. European leaders see the debt-relief deal struck with Greece on Oct. 26 as crucial to containing the crisis in Greece and insulating Italy, a much larger economy whose political leaders have also struggled to cut budgets and deal with heavy debt.

The agreement in Greece could not have come soon enough for its European partners, who have pressed the country hard to forge a broader political consensus behind the debt deal. But it was not clear whether the agreement would provide the certainty that skeptical investors are demanding to calm turbulent financial markets.

The debt deal requires that the Greek Parliament pass a new round of deeply unpopular austerity measures, including layoffs of government workers, in a climate of growing social unrest. It also calls for permanent foreign monitoring in Greece to ensure that it makes good on its pledges of structural changes to revitalize its economy, a requirement that many Greeks see as an affront to national sovereignty.

With a narrow and eroding majority in Parliament, Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist government found that it could not unify to push through such measures on its own, but Antonis Samaras, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party, opposed many of the debt deal’s provisions and demanded Mr. Papandreou’s resignation and a snap election. After days of frantic political wrangling, Mr. Papandreou survived a confidence vote in Parliament on Friday, setting the stage for Sunday’s compromise.

The new unity government, in which the major parties would share power, is widely expected to be led by a nonpolitician and to govern for several months, long enough to carry out the debt deal and pass a budget for 2011. The name of the new prime minister and the composition of the new cabinet are not expected to be announced until Monday, when the leaders will meet again, according to a statement Sunday night by the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, who moderated the talks on Sunday.

In a statement early Monday morning, the Greek Finance Ministry said that delegations from the Socialist Party and New Democracy met on Sunday “to discuss the time frame of the actions” to implement the debt deal, and added that the two parties regarded Feb. 19 as “the most appropriate date for elections.”

In reaching the agreement, Mr. Papandreou agreed to meet Mr. Samaras’s demand that he step down as prime minister, while Mr. Samaras agreed to back the debt deal and a seven-point plan of priorities proposed by Mr. Papandreou that would essentially commit the new government to the terms of the debt deal.

Mr. Samaras is not expected to play a role in the unity government, but would be New Democracy’s candidate for prime minister in the general election.

In many ways, a new interim government for Greece buys time for European leaders to put together a stronger bailout mechanism that would protect larger economies from the risk of default, chief among them Italy. High debt, low growth and the diminishing credibility of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have made that nation increasingly vulnerable.

“The decision is very positive, because it will appease the markets and because it shows that Greek authorities are doing what foreign leaders want them to do — to get on with implementing the conditions for the E.U. debt deal,” said Athanassios Papandropoulos, an economist and commentator for the conservative Greek newspaper Estia.

Still, he said, he saw little chance that a unity government could get Greece back on the road to economic, political and social recovery. “I don’t think it will work,” Mr. Papandropoulos said. “It will last three months, then we’ll have elections, and then we’ll have the same problems all over again.”

Landon Thomas Jr. contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/europe/pressure-mounts-on-greek-premier-to-resign.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Greek Cabinet Backs Papandreou on Referendum

November 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The proposal threatens Greece’s adherence to the terms of a new deal with its foreign lenders and has plunged Europe into a fresh bout of financial turmoil.

But several lawmakers in the governing Socialist Party rejected the plan, raising the possibility that Mr. Papandreou will not survive a no-confidence vote scheduled for Friday that depends on his holding together a razor-thin parliamentary majority.

An emergency cabinet meeting convened by Mr. Papandreou ended at 3 a.m. with the cabinet saying that it unanimously supported the prime minister’s call for a referendum, local news outlets reported. The opposition and some members of his own party, however, were calling for new elections immediately.

Despite the political turmoil provoked by Mr. Papandreou’s call for a referendum, the prime minister appeared to have rallied his troops behind him after the seven-hour cabinet meeting.

The Greek government spokesman, Elias Mossialos, said the government aimed to hold the referendum “as soon as possible” — “on the condition” that Greece had the “basic elements, not the full agreement” of the loan deal with the European Union in place. News reports on Wednesday said the referendum might be brought forward as soon as December.

The political atmosphere remained tense and chaotic, with politicians both in the government and in the opposition maneuvering intensely ahead of the confidence vote.

The leader of the center-right opposition, Antonis Samaras, repeated calls on Wednesday for early elections but did not ask his legislators to resign, as he had hinted he might do, a move that would have immediately led to early elections. The next general election is not due until 2013.

Still, the political instability in Athens seemed likely to delay — and perhaps scuttle — the debt deal that European leaders reached after marathon negotiations in Brussels last week.

Financial markets in Europe rallied on Wednesday after two days of losses that had wiped out the gains since the Brussels deal was announced last week. Some analysts said that Greece was now coming closer to a messy default on its debt, and perhaps a departure from the zone of 17 countries that use the euro as their common currency.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, apparently caught off guard by Mr. Papandreou’s call for a referendum and then by the disarray in his party, said they would hold emergency talks on Greece with euro zone leaders on Wednesday. They said they also planned to meet with representatives of the Greek government before a critical meeting of the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies on Thursday, and they defended the terms of the bailout package as “more necessary than ever today.”

The chairman of the euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that the plan to hold a referendum endangered an $11 billion loan that Greece is to receive under the bailout deal, and that Greece urgently needed to avoid a default. Mr. Juncker, who is the prime minister of Luxembourg, said Greece could face bankruptcy if it votes no on the bailout.

The big fear is that a decisive turn against the bailout package in Greece could undermine European efforts to enforce deep budget cuts in other heavily indebted European countries, especially Italy, which is mired in its own political crisis and has a far larger economy and much more debt than Greece.

Political analysts and several advisers to Mr. Papandreou said the prime minister had decided to announce a popular referendum on Monday night as his last best hope to shore up his eroded political standing. They said he wanted to put Greece’s fate back in the hands of the Greek people and to force his many opponents — both inside his government and in the opposition — to coalesce around the idea that what is at stake is Greece’s membership in the euro zone.

Mr. Papandreou wanted Greek voters “to take a position, to see the choice before us in its starkness, hoping they will back the lesser of two evils, instead of letting irate reactions in the streets dominate the debate,” said one adviser to the prime minister.

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting from Athens, and Stephen Castle from Brussels.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/europe/greek-cabinet-backs-call-for-referendum-on-debt-crisis.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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