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 After years of austerity measures demanded by Greece's international
creditors - the latest passed in parliament last Sunday - Greeks
wonder whether the sacrifices they have made to stay in the euro
were worth the pain.
"We are done, we can't even leave our homes anymore to have a
coffee," said Panagiotis Zabetakis, 50, a carpenter who, like one in
every four Greeks, is unemployed.
Playing with worry beads at a cheap cafe in an Athens suburb,
Zabetakis paid 1 euro ($1.10) for his morning coffee. That will rise
on June 1 when the measures passed to secure Wednesday's deal start
coming into force.
By next year Greeks will pay an extra 20-30 cents for their coffee
and the price of just about everything else will rise too as added
tax will (VAT) goes up to 24 percent from 23 percent. Greeks'
spending power, meanwhile, is in sharp decline.
"We are running after the Europeans, hoping they throw us a bone
which would suffice for a few months. I'm very disappointed,"
Zabetakis said, criticizing the deal which opens the way for debt
relief from 2018, but does not include any firm promise to reduce
the payments Greece has to make.
VORTEX OF AUSTERITY
Greece have been hit with waves of pension cuts and tax increases
since it was forced to seek its first bailout in 2010.
Leaving the meeting in Brussels where he secured 10.3 billion euros
($11.5 billion) in new funds from his euro zone colleagues, Finance
Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said he hoped the deal marked "the
beginning of turning Greece's vicious circle of
recession-measures-recession into one where investors have a clear
runway to invest in Greece."
The deal won a provisional commitment from the IMF to return to the
bailout process, but with Germany opposed to cutting the debt pile,
euro zone ministers made any relief measures such as extending
maturities on loans contingent on Athens respecting strict criteria,
something Greeks fear means more austerity.
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"This cannot continue ... they (the Europeans) are telling us we will be in debt
for 100 years. How can we be pleased?" asked pensioner Eleni Palaiologou, 85.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected in early 2015 on a promise to end
austerity only to row back and accept a new bailout to avoid being forced out of
the euro, struggled to get his coalition to accept the latest reforms.
Scraping through with a narrow majority of 153 members in the 300 seat
parliament, there is some stirring dissent. One of Tsipras' lawmakers quit after
Sunday's vote.
"We are adopting measures and policies which run counter to the core of our
values and policies," the resigned member of parliament, Vassiliki Katrivanou,
said on her Facebook page. "But I cannot think of any credible alternative."
On the streets of Athens, a 33-year-old chartered accountant, who declined to
give his name fearing repercussions at work, said he was tired of scraping by.
"I feel we are just living in this vortex of austerity measures," he said. "It's
a constant of just sacrifices."
(Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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