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Fotis Kouvelis and members of Democratic Left refuse to vote on the measures associated with the changes in labour law. This has become clear after the next meeting of the leaders of the three parties in the coalition government - New Democracy, PASOK and Democratic Left.

PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos wants the problem with the changes in the labour market to be excluded from the negotiations and for it to be decided at the highest European level.

The socialists do not like the cuts in compensations for redundancy, the elimination of higher wages for overtime work and the reduction of public workers’ salaries by 30% on average.

"I will not accept, nor will I (I or the deputies of Democratic Left) vote on the changes in the labour rights of citizens," Kouvelis is adamant. He insists that what the Troika demands has nothing to do with the improvement of the financial situation of Greece.

The only consequence would be the destruction of the last labour rights, which ordinary workers still have. "This is my firm and unchangeable position concerning the demands of the supervisory Troika," Kouvelis insists. According to him, the result of the removal of collective labour agreements will be an increase in dismissals, in unemployment and a deepening recession.

"The financial management of the country should be in the hands of the Court and the Bank of Greece. We are not a protectorate of our external partners and the lenders’ Troika," PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos said with his typical pathos. He said he had imagined the June negotiations with the lenders differently.

The political agreement on the aid to Greece now has to convince both markets and society that it will ensure sustainable management of the crisis, PASOK's leader says. Otherwise, the country will fall back into instability - a risk that the Greek people cannot take.

Venizelos insists that some of the hardest changes that Greece should have made are related to labour legislation. They were voted on and partly implemented at the beginning of the year. The country signed the second bailout agreement with the foreign lenders then, which opened the way for the haircut of the country's debt by 100 billion euro. In his opinion, new cuts in wages and benefits in the private sector will not help either to restore economic stability or mprove competitiveness..

Venizelos determines the new measures to change the labour law as ungrounded and challenging, since there is yet no positive assessment of their impact on economic recovery.

He said he has asked Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to raise the issue of the formation of the final version of the fiscal adjustment at the highest European level. "The problem is no longer technical, but purely political."

The country's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras was the last to make a statement after the meeting of political leaders. In his concise speech, he first pointed out the efforts of today’s government to change the country's image and then, drew attention to the difficult negotiations the government was carrying out with international lenders.

"I cannot imagine what might happen if I was not ruling with an iron hand," Samaras said conceitedly and stressed that Greece has managed to significantly change the initial proposals of the lenders in connection with the reform of labour laws. "I look only forward and I want the greatest possible unity. We will save Greece, as many of us dare (to vote on the changes)," Samaras concluded, indirectly turning to the politicians who have started to back out and refuse to vote on the fiscal adjustment measures.

The parties that support the government already feel strong pressure from their members. "We cannot say one thing before the elections and do completely different things after them," Michalis Cassis, a deputy of PASOK, who refuses to vote on the measures, told RED radio. The probability of his colleague Theodoros Parastatidis following him remains open.

Ioannis Miheloianakis, who does not like the coming budget cuts, left the Democratic Left too. He said he wanted to be part of a broader patriotic left implying the radical left SYRIZA. The third deputy, who is leaving the flank of those governing, is Nikos Stavroianis. New Democracy’s leader Antonis Samaras personally disaffiliated him after Stavroianis said in public that his personal conscience did not allow him to vote on the reduction in the income of the most vulnerable social strata.