Greece

The Eurogroup agreement has not been concluded, in part because we do not yet know what “reforms” will be proposed by the Greek government today (Monday 23 February) and which ones of those will eventually be accepted. However, those of us that have been elected based on the programme of Syriza, and see the announcements made at Thessaloniki [i.e. the “Thessaloniki Programme”] as pledges that we have promised to the Greek people, we have deep concerns. It is our duty to write them down. The general programme of the agreement is as follows: • Greece asks for the extension of the current loan...

The “win-win” approach was always illusory: the approach aiming for an agreed solution beneficial for all, from the Greek worker to the Greek banker and investor to the Eurozone, ECB and EU, and the illusions that a "national" negotiating team (including even previous memorandum “enemies”) would deliver the desired outcome smoothly. Driven by the logic of seeking this impossible harmonious agreement, the Syriza leaders: • Dropped the aim of writing off the majority of the debt with a European Summit similar to the German in 1953; froze, instead of disbanding, the official privatisation agency...

Below, from Reuters , is the text of the Greek government's 24 February 2015 letter to the eurozone finance ministers. The rumour is that the finance ministers have found it acceptable as a basis for extending credits for another four months, but the formal decision is due to be taken around 28 February. For criticism from the left, see the letter to Syriza members by Costas Lapavitsas and a comment by Stathis Kouvelakis . Following is the text of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis's letter to Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem outlining Greece's proposed reforms, published by...

The decent stance of Syriza’s government indicated its intention not to betray the people, and the effect on the government of the mass rallies held in all major cities of Greece with the key slogan: “Not a step back!”. Germany’s intransigence is grounded in the fear among sections of the ruling elite that if they relent on austerity for Greece, then they will encourage anti-austerity movements in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble claimed that he “pities” the Greek people for the “irresponsible” government that they have elected. He demanded that the Greek...

A mainstream columnist in the Financial Times has advised the Greek government to stand firm, use imaginative financial techniques to get round blackmail from the eurozone and ECB leaders, and to stop payments on debt to bodies like the ECB and the European Financial Stabilisation Fund. On 16 February, Wolfgang Münchau wrote: “My advice to [Greek finance minister] Yanis Varoufakis,” he continued, “would be to ignore the exasperated looks and veiled threats and stand firm. He is a member of the first government in the eurozone with a democratic mandate to stand up to an utterly dysfunctional...

For Syriza to triumph, it is not enough for it to play tough with the European Union. not enough to bypass the structure of the European Central Bank to find individual national allies, not enough to refuse to cooperate with capitalist auditors. Greece has already lost 30% of its GDP since the peak before the crisis, with unemployment standing at 25%, a decline only comparable to that seen in the US during the Great Depression. Syriza is fighting for fiscal leeway to revive the public sector, slow the pace of job cuts, raise pensions and boost consumer demand in an effort to revive the Greek...

Since the Greek debt crisis broke in early 2010, Costas Lapavitsas has advocated Greek exit from the eurozone. He argued for that in an interview with Solidarity back in May 2010 and has written much about it since then. He is a Marxist economist specialising in the study of financial systems, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and, since 25 January, a Syriza MP in the Greek parliament. Straight after 25 January, he published a new book, Against the Troika. It has a foreword by Oskar Lafontaine, who was SPD minister of finance in Germany in 1998-9 and later...

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Syriza (not yet of communism). All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Draghi and Schäuble, Dijsselbloem and Renzi, French “Socialists”and Christian-Democrats... Two things result from this fact: 1. Syriza is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. 2. It is high time that Syriza should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Syriza with a manifesto of the party itself (and an iron...

Thanasis Kourkoulas and Sotiris Martalis from DEA (Internationalist Workers’ Left), a Trotskyist organisation in the left of Syriza, spoke to Micheál McEoin in Athens on 24 January, just before the election. Sotiris began by setting out the backdrop to the election and the crisis in Greece: GDP went down 25%, which had only happened before during the Second World War. Wages are down 35-40%. Taxes have increased eight-fold, and now we have near 30% unemployment. They destroyed laws protecting workers such as collective bargaining, and there are no restrictions on lay-offs. We have had big...

On 30 January Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and chair of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, awkwardly shook hands with Greece’s new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, at a press conference after they had met in Athens, and whispered...”you have just killed the [EU/ ECB/ IMF] Troika”. Varoufakis responded: “Wow!” That felt good. It did not feel as good when Tsipras subsequently committed himself to the “fulfilling of our debt obligations towards the ECB and the IMF”. It did not feel as good when Yanis Varoufakis said on 1 February in Paris that the Greek government is willing to...