Galery

1

Maria S. Topalova

The biggest problem that the Greek government is facing is the lost confidence admits the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on a press conference which he held in honor of the first 100 days of government. His appearance coincides with the new assessment of the Greek economy of the international agency for credit rating Moody’s, which announced that Greece is slowly dieing and did not exclude the possibility for a new decrease of the credit rating of the country. “There is a pressure from outside”, admitted the socialist Prime Minister of the country and made it clear that the series of decreases of the credit rating of Greece is not a result of the 100 days of PASOK government, but rather as a result of the irresponsible government of New Democracy.

“From the very beginning of their government they announced our acceptance in the Euro zone with a deception. Since then began the decrease in the confidence in our country”, reminded Papandreou. There is no risk of Greece going out of the Euro zone or turning to the services of the International currency board, was the main massage which the leader of the socialists try to give the Greek journalists and the foreign correspondents gathered in Zappeion hall. He repeated the assessment of the other members of the council of ministers, who accused the foreign press in racism towards Greece. “What if not racism is the statement that corruption is in the Greeks DNA? They refuse us our right to change, to cast aside the vicious part of us”, said with outrage the Greek Prime Minister.

He explained that the Greek economy is not in a catastrophic state because of the world economic crisis. However due to the world economic crisis the markets are very careful and even scared and that is the reason why they react with exaggeration to the situation in the Greek economy. “We will not just make superficial changes just to impress the markets and the international investors. Our reforms will be essential” is the opinion of the Greek Prime Minister. According to him the international markets insist on strict measures against the Greek population. “They can not understand that we follow a new path, in which we will make the necessary reforms, however the price for them will not be paid by the poor and middle layers of the society”, insisted the Prime Minister.

He promised again that the Value added tax will not change in spite of the statements of some members of the government. Papandreou assured that he will keep his pre elective promise to increase the salaries with a percentage higher than the inflation, however only up to a certain level of remuneration. George Papandreou underlined that all changes will be made after an opened dialog with the population in order to avoid strikes and riots. “I know that there will always be layers which will not be happy, however we are trying to talk them into our goals”, he added.

The Prime Minister describe the work of his team for the first three months as great and faultless. For this time his team managed to prepare 10 new bills and introduce the budget. It has also managed to prepare the Program for stability and development on which the government relies to turn the international opinion in favor of Greece. Nevertheless the Prime Minister admitted that the international view of the financial state of Greece is constantly deteriorating. Only in few months time spreads expanded and the interest of the state crediting increased from 0,9% to 2,2%.