Reuters reported on Thursday that the leftist Tsipras government is sticking by its objection towards putting the Greece’s signature on a joint declaration by the EU27 to mark the Union’s 60th anniversary.
The news agency quotes officials in Athens and Brussels, days after the report first emerged in the Greek capital, which showed that the increasingly embattled leftist-rightist coalition government will attempt to pressure European partners into including a reference to “Europe’s Social Model”.
The reference is part of Athens’ attempt to deflect standing demands by creditors, especially the IMF, for labor market reforms and liberalization in crisis-battered Greece.
The leftist government wants to restore obligatory collective bargaining negotiations between unions and employers’ groups representing entire sectors; the IMF is adamantly opposed to the restoration of the regime. Creditors want to eliminate various privileges allocated to unionists and to mandate that whatever industrial actions are taken with a majority vote of workers; Athens wants the current framework for deciding strikes to remain, while also preventing mass layoffs without the relevant minister’s approval.
The Union’s leaders, minus the departing Britain, are set to mark the anniversary on Saturday at a summit in Rome.
“The negotiations on the draft Rome declaration have ended as the text was finalized by the EU27… Only Greece has a general reservation on the text,” Reuters quoted an EU source as saying.
Meanwhile, the news agency quotes another EU source, identified as an EU diplomat, as saying that “we won’t be blackmailed by one member state, which is linking one EU issue with a totally different one.”
