Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told his Cabinet members on Monday that last month’s Eurogroup decisions for the country – debt relief measures and the framework for post-bailout supervision – was a “minimum recognition for the Greek people’s sacrifices”, with his comments again carried live by the state-run broadcaster.
The Cabinet meeting was also noteworthy for the fact that Defense Minister Panos Kammenos was a ‘no show’, with the official reason being his attendance at armed forces-related events. The meeting came a day after Kammenos, the head of a small right-wing party that props up the Tsipras coalition government, said he and his party’s dwindling number of MPs will leave the government and vote against an agreement between Athens and Skopje resolving the fYRoM “name issue”. The Delphic statement left open the possibility of continued Parliament support to the Tsipras government, but without members of the Independent Greeks (AN.EL) holding Cabinet posts.
Although Tsipras said these sacrifices were “not always fair”, he blamed previous Greek governments and the “Institutions”, the preferred way the leftist-rightist coalition government refers to Greece’s institutional creditors and Eurozone partners.
In a carefully worded statement, amid the looming “enhanced supervision” that Greece will be under after August 2018 and with fiscal targets fixed until far-off 2060, Tsipras referred to a “clean exit from the memorandums without new prior actions and without the asphyxiating supervision (by creditors) in exchange for financing.”
He also said the June 21 Eurogroup decision provided a permanent resolution to the issue of Greek debt sustainability.
While avoiding the political “hot potato” of already agreed to social security sector cuts as of Jan. 1, 2019, along with a lowering of the annual tax-free income ceiling, Tsipras promised a return of previous safeguards in the labor market, namely a restoration of collective bargaining agreements, a increase in the minimum monthly wage scale and what he called “targeted tax breaks”.
