REAL NEWS (Sunday)

The 9 conditions of the troika for a reduction of the debt

A 60 day ultimatum from the lenders to the government

They demand: restructuring or an ERT like closure of loss-making state enterprises and organisations.

New measures worth €2 billion for 2015

  • ‘Clearing up’ the ‘red’ loans and auctions of foreclosed homes for those in debt
  • Cuts in pensions and reform of social security
  • Cuts in health spending
  • An elimination of the lower VAT rates for islands and sweeping checks for tax evasion
  • Private sector entry into the energy market
  • Allowing mass layoffs
  • Opening up the professions which remain ‘closed’


Declan Costello, the new member of the troika in Athens: “They can tell us what they want as long as whatever needs to happen, happens.”

 

 

EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON (Monday)

Red alert over ‘red’ loans and social security

Nightmare scenarios over unserviced loans and funds

The cost is dizzying to untangle the Gordian knot that is the unserviced loans of businesses and households, the height of which has surpassed 77 billion euros. The 10 billion euros which are the cash reserves of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund are not enough. The situation is the same or worse at social security funds. Measures to refinance outstanding debts fell short of expectations.

DIMOKRATIA (Sunday)

21 islands are awaiting ‘Samaras’s orders’

“We don’t have a doctor, water, medicine, a teacher, fuel

The map of the major shortages

Cosmopolitan Mykonos is without an orthopedic specialist, Amorgos is without a pediatrician.

RIZOSPASTIS (Sunday)

‘Liberalisation’ of ferries: the people pay the consequences

Repeated increases in ticket prices, ‘rust buckets’ at sea, destroyed ship-workers and profits for shipowners are the results of the ‘liberalisation’.

From 2001 until now the prices of tickets has risen by up to 405%! Only in the past three years the rises reached 42%. Prices of tickets for ferry boats are out of the reach of the working class family and make the cost of a few days holiday on an island prohibitive.

Frequent breakdowns, over-aged and under maintained ships with crews that have months to see a salary and work under slave galley conditions, unwarranted immobilisation of ships and, of course, subsidies for shipowners comprise the current state of the ferry industry. 

KATHIMERINI (Sunday)

And yet, the number of farmers is increasing

For the first time in decades, in 2013 the number of people employed in the agricultural sector increased. Young people with high levels of education make up the majority, with an interest in new crops.