A new financial deal has been reached between EU leaders and the Greek government if Athens parliament approves tough austerity measures. If you live in Greece, what is your reaction?
Οι ηγέτες της Ευρωζώνης και η ελληνική κυβέρνηση κατέληξαν σε συμφωνία και το ελληνικό κοινοβούλιο θα πρέπει να εγκρίνει μέτρα σκληρής λιτότητας. Αν ζείτε στην Ελλάδα ποιά είναι η αντίδρασή σας;
The Greek government and its eurozone creditors have reached an agreement after marathon overnight talks on a third Greek bailout.
After almost 17 hours of talks between eurozone leaders, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, announced that the 19 leaders of the eurozone had unanimously reached agreement. He said they were “all ready to go” on a new programme for Greece under the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, adding that Athens had signed up to “serious reforms”.
How do you feel about the prospect of another bailout? How would it affect you, your friend and your family? Have you changed your mind since voting in the referendum?
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The new measures Greece must now implement
This includes pension reforms, liberalising its economy (from Sunday opening hours to opening up closed professions), privatising its energy transmission network, reforming its labour market practices (including new rules on industrial action, and collective dismissals), and action on non-performing loans.
Here are the key points:
- carry out ambitious pension reforms and specify policies to fully compensate for the fiscal impact of the Constitutional Court ruling on the 2012 pension reform and to implement the zero deficit clause or mutually agreeable alternative measures by October 2015;
- adopt more ambitious product market reforms with a clear timetable for implementation of all OECD toolkit I recommendations, including Sunday trade, sales periods, pharmacy ownership, milk and bakeries, except over-the-counter pharmaceutical products, which will be implemented in a next step, as well as for the opening of macro-critical closed professions (e.g. ferry transportation). On the follow-up of the OECD toolkit-II, manufacturing needs to be included in the prior action;
- on energy markets, proceed with the privatisation of the electricity transmission network operator (ADMIE), unless replacement measures can be found that have equivalent effect on competition, as agreed by the Institutions;
- on labour markets, undertake rigorous reviews and modernisation of collective bargaining, industrial action and, in line with the relevant EU directive and best practice, collective dismissals, along the timetable and the approach agreed with the Institutions. On the basis of these reviews, labour market policies should be aligned with international and European best practices, and should not involve a return to past policy settings which are not compatible with the goals of promoting sustainable and inclusive growth;
- adopt the necessary steps to strengthen the financial sector, including decisive action on non-performing loans and measures to strengthen governance of the HFSF and the banks, in particular by eliminating any possibility for political interference especially in appointment processes.
And on top of that, Greece will also establish a new fund to sell off valuable assets to help repay its new bailout, and refinance its banks.
Or as the statement put it:
- develop a significantly scaled up privatisation programme with improved governance; valuable Greek assets will be transferred to an independent fund that will monetize the assets through privatisations and other means. The monetization of the assets will be one source to make the scheduled repayment of the new loan of ESM and generate over the life of the new loan a targeted total of €50bn of which €25bn will be used for the repayment of recapitalization of banks and other assets and 50% of every remaining euro (i.e. 50% of €25bn) will be used for decreasing the debt to GDP ratio and the remaining 50% will be used for investments.
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