The laborious re-ascent

A survey of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Great Britain, defined as a “European tour of belt-tightening measures”, has been published by the French daily “La Croix”, analyzing the principal austerity measures and anti-crisis plans and the reactions of the population.Greece. With 155 votes in favour, 138 against and 5 abstentions, in the second day of a general strike and against a background of urban guerrilla warfare at Athens with clashes between demonstrators and police, the Greek Parliament approved “the second austerity plan” to save the country from default on 29 June. It’s a package aimed at clawing back 78 billion euro that is an essential precondition for unblocking the disbursement of the new tranche (12 billion) of emergency aid for the beleaguered country by the EU and the IMF. In a country now in chronic recession, with a youth unemployment rate of over 40% and public finances crippled by a debt mountain equivalent to 150% of GDP, the package just approved – 28 billion in cuts and tax measures plus a further 50 in privatizations – involves, explains “La Croix”, “apart from an avalanche of privatizations, a rise in taxes, including VAT, and cuts to wages and pensions for state employees, already clobbered by the first austerity plan adopted eighteen months ago”. The vote on the provisions for the conversion of the austerity measures into law is scheduled for 30 June. Ireland. “First European country to have gone into economic crisis, Ireland was also the first to adopt a package of austerity measures in February 2009”, says the French daily. “Since then the crisis of the Irish banks has deteriorated and the country has had to implement three new austerity plans”. The Irish “have long accepted austerity with a degree of stoicism”, but their anger was politically expressed with the “historic defeat” of Fianna Fáil, “the country’s ruling party almost uninterruptedly for 90 years”, in February 2011.Portugal. The new Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho “wishes to implement measures to revive the economy negotiated with the international ‘troika’ as a quid pro quo for an aid package worth 78 billion euro”, says “La Croix”. A freeze of wages in the public sector, cuts to overtime, less advantageous dismissal conditions and reductions of welfare and unemployment benefits: these, explains the French daily, are the main provisions to which some tax hikes are added. The social protest, suspended at the end of March following the dismissal of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates, “could be resumed, since the recession is inevitable. The trades unions are planning a wave of protest actions at the beginning of July”.Spain. The Socialist government launched its first austerity measures in May 2010. Premier José Luis Zapatero has lowered public sector wages by 5% and frozen pensions. These measures are combined with structural reforms: raising of the pensionable age to 67 (against the current 65), reform of the labour market, reorganization of savings banks, weak link in the Spanish banking system. In spite of all this, points out “La Croix”, “signs of growth have still to be seen and unemployment is over 20% of the workforce”. “Young people – 43% of the under-25s are unemployed – have set up camps in various cities to protest against the political class and the economic decisions” being taken, while the “Piazza de la Puerta del Sol at Madrid has become the showcase of the disaffected”. “The government – according to the French daily – appears very fragile”, in particular in view of the early elections called for November.Italy. The emergency budget for the correction of Italy’s public accounts, for a sum of approximately 47 billion euro, that Italy’s Minister of Finance Giulio Tremonti has been forced to present to respect European commitments on balancing public accounts by 2014, is due to land on the table of the Council of Ministers on the afternoon of 30 June. In contrast to what had been forecast, the bill postpones from 2020 to 2030 the deadline for the raising of pensionable age for women to 65 years. Other measures in the package include the block of turn over in public employment and the freezing of contractual increases, a squeeze on the healthcare budget and the costs of parliament and government, and cuts to funding for schools. With reference to the mood of the country that preceded the presentation of the emergency budget, “La Croix” observes: “On the political level, the Italian austerity ‘cure’ has already had concrete repercussions, as shown by the failure of the right, which lost a key city like Milan in the local elections at the end of May”. Great Britain. “The British austerity plan”, writes the French daily, provides for the elimination of “approximately 350,000 jobs in the public sector over a five-year period” in order to “lower the deficit from 10.4% of GDP last year to 2% in 2015”. To this end “funding for investments has been reduced by almost a third and current expenditure by 8%”. The British “have long accepted the cuts to expenditure” but, according to “La Croix”, in the near future “the country could see the biggest general strike in twenty years” with the involvement of almost 750,000 workers, mainly employees in the public sector, whose “anger is crystallized around the reform of pensions” which is aimed at raising the pensionable age to 66, instead of the current 60 and 65, by 2020.