Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-10-24

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PM Tsipras: Greece's creditors need to meet their commitments

[02] Greek authorities, institutions to continue talks on 2017 budget

[03] Government's partners are not Greek people's partners, says KKE leader Koutsoumbas

[04] We seek to be on a course in December that will lead to a debt relief, says Dep.FM Mardas

[05] Greek public debt grew to 179.2 pct of GDP in Q2

[06] 11,559 migrants and refugees stranded on the northern Aegean islands

[01] PM Tsipras: Greece's creditors need to meet their commitments

Referring to the three challenges (economic, refugee, security), he underlined that what is at stake right now is the cohesion of Europe itself.

On the debt issue, he said that it is not a Greek issue, but a European one, adding that Europe has a strong incentive to clear out immediately the situation over the Greek debt. He explained that 2017 is a critical political year for many European countries, where elections will be held, and noboby would like a discussion on the Greek debt to become a political argument and pre-election tool for the European far-right. Tsipras sounded the alarm bell saying that this is what will happen if the discussion on the debt is postponed to the second half of 2017.

He also expressed the certainty that nobody in Europe would like new turbulences, highlighting the role of Greece as a pole of stability in a fragile region.

Tsipras said that Greece has turned page and left behind the seven years of the recession adding that it is time for the turn to recovery and growth. "Our creditors need to meet their commitments in order to agree on specific measures for the debt relief by the end of 2016," sending a strong message to investors to meet the criteria of the ECB so that Greece is included in the quantitative easing programme as soon as possible and returns to the markets.

The prime minister explained that this way the economy will gain further memontum to succeed and overcome the estimated high growth rates for 2017. Moreover, it will contribute to the success of the programme, he stated.

What is at stake right now is not only the outcome of a crisis, economic or refugee crisis, but the cohesion of Europe itself, he stressed.

He also said that Europe's cohesion is judged by its ability to face all the parallel crises with solidarity and effectiveness; economic crisis, refugee crisis and the external and internal security crisis, with the upsurge of terrorism.

Tsipras sent the message that "Europe à la carte, that some of our partners unfortunately support, in reality means "'non-Europe'", and stressed that "the common house has also common obligations", "and not à la carte obligations."

The prime minister stated that the Euromed countries share common experiences and face common challenges:

a) we have suffered disproportionately from the economic crisis and the austerity policy options, the degradation of work and the deconstruction of the welfare state.

b) we are in the first line of Schengen and experiencing the pressure of migration and refugee flows.

c) we have borders with the destabilized wider region of North Africa and the Middle East. We have all the positive features and all the difficulties that have to do with the fact that we live in a blessed part of the world, which was always an area of tensions and conflicts.

Therefore, he stressed, "we have a common interest to work together in order to promote common initiatives and priorities at European level."

[02] Greek authorities, institutions to continue talks on 2017 budget

[03] Government's partners are not Greek people's partners, says KKE leader Koutsoumbas

"This is a corrupted state and political system that the government and the main opposition use every time they want to argue over this kind of issues in order to hide the huge problems which is the problems of the working classes, the anti-labour and antipopular measures that the government is currently discussing with its partners in order to bring additional measures and probably a fourth memorandum," stated Koutsoumbas.

He also noted that in this political system, with these measures and with these governments, corruption will not be combated and the problems will not be solved.

He called absurd the argument that KKE attacks SYRIZA and supports main opposition New Democracy (ND) noting that KKE has struggled and continue to confront ND "We exercise criticism to both because they follow the same policy on the same direction".

He also said that SYRIZA has turned into a social-democratic party, a clearly bourgeois party and did not exclude the possibility of a future co-governance with some parts of ND.

[04] We seek to be on a course in December that will lead to a debt relief, says Dep.FM Mardas

"The first thought was that if there was no intention for discussion, the issue would have ended and we would stop at the 15 percent that has already been agreed; namely that whatever annual debt servicing will not surpass 15 percent of GDP," said Mardas.

Asked on the possibility of changes in the government's composition, Mardas reminded that during the first meeting of the cabinet, the prime minister "had announced that a review of the government's work will be held after a reasonable period and if there was need for changes, there would be changes."

[05] Greek public debt grew to 179.2 pct of GDP in Q2

The EU executive's statistics arm, in a report released here, said that the public debt in the Eurozone eased to 91.2 pct of average GDP in the second quarter, from 92.1 pct in the first quarter, while in the EU-28 the public debt fell to 84.3 pct of GDP from 87.5 pct over the same periods, respectively.

Greece (179.2 pct) recorded the highest public debt rate in the EU, followed by Italy (135.5 pct) and Portugal (131.7 pct), while Estonia (9.7 pct), Luxembourg (22 pct) and Bulgaria (29.4 pct) recorded the lowest rates.

The public debt grew in 13 EU member-states in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of 2016 and fell in 15 member-states. Greece (3.1 percentage points), Portugal (2.8 percentage points) and Latvia (2.6 percentage points) recorded the biggest increase in public debt rates.

[06] 11,559 migrants and refugees stranded on the northern Aegean islands

The increased flow in comparison with the summer season to Samos continued. 21 migrants arrived on the island in the last 24 hours.

A total of 336 person arrived on the northern Aegean islands in the last three days increasing the number migrants and refugees that have sought asylum in Greece and remain trapped on Samos, Chios and Lesvos to 11,559

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