As many as 5,000 Greeks, including hundreds of angry police officers on motorbikes, joined protests on Monday against renewed calls by international creditors to cut 15,000 civil service jobs, and to put thousands of public workers on reduced wages ahead of possible dismissal, in a country where unemployment already tops 27 percent.

The mayor of Athens was hospitalized briefly Sunday night after workers assaulted him as he left a meeting to discuss municipal layoffs, and the mayor of Greece’s second-largest city, Salonika, threatened to quit on Monday rather than face deeper cuts.

The protests have flared after a period of relative calm in Greece and revived questions about the ability of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to carry out the cuts being demanded — and indeed about the very survivability of his government.

International creditors have already granted more than 200 billion euros, or $257 billion, in financial assistance to the euro zone’s crisis-hit countries, but the demands for deeper reforms that have accompanied the aid are badly dividing the government in Greece, as well as those in Italy and Portugal.

Last week, the government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho of Portugal, considered something of a model nation by international markets and creditors, nearly came apart as support waned for the austerity program he was charged with implementing in exchange for Portugal’s 78 billion euro bailout.

He reshuffled his cabinet over the weekend after Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar quit abruptly last week.

Top of the agenda at the ministers’ monthly gathering in Brussels was how much of the next batch of a promised 8 billion euros in emergency aid they should release to Greece.

At a news conference in Brussels on Monday, the Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said euro ministers decided to make a disbursement of 2.5 billion euros to Greece, with a further disbursement of 500 million euros in October, on the condition that the country meets a set of reform commitments by July 19.

In addition, the ministers agreed that profits of about 2 billion euros made by the European Central Bank on the purchases of Greek bonds would be given to Greece in two disbursements.

Rather than pay the bulk of Greece’s aid in a lump sum, the ministers stuck to a plan to stagger the aid in order to keep up the pressure on Greece to reform what they say is a bloated and inefficient public sector. There was little hint of relief on the horizon.

“The path for Greece will remain a difficult one,” said Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, ahead of the meeting. “I would warn against any illusions.”

Despite the evident anger in the streets in Greece, representatives of Greece’s so-called troika of lenders — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — made clear that they expected the Greek government to do more, including curbing excessive spending in health care.

But the Greeks have little choice but to comply. Three years after the government’s debt crisis blew a hole in its public finances and threatened to knock the country out of the euro zone, Greece remains dependent on two aid packages of 240 billion euros.

Payments to Greece of smaller amounts of bailout money began late last year, when lenders began pressing for tighter control in exchange for disbursements following serious concerns the country was backsliding on reforms like dismantling protected sectors of the economy.

One strategy ministers were discussing on Monday evening was to slice one component of the aid from European governments worth 4.8 billion euros into two or three parts, and to impose further strictures on Greece that must be met before the end of the month for those slices to be released in full, or in part.

A final decision on the aid could be made in a teleconference later in July, according to Euorpean Union diplomats with direct knowledge of the discussions.

James Kanter reported from Brussels.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/business/global/greece-and-lenders-near-deal-on-new-austerity-measures.html?partner=rss&emc=rss