The leaders of Greece’s coalition government met on Feb. 18 to discuss the country’s record 27 percent unemployment rate and how to protect the country’s most vulnerable sector who have been the most affected by austerity measures, but nobody offered any solutions.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras met with his partners, PASOK Socialist head Evangelos Venizelos and Democratic Left chief Fotis Kouvelis, who said the country’s crushing economic crisis was topic number one, media reports said.
Kouvelis, a former Communist leader who is now backing the Conservative-led government of Samaras’ New Democracy party, said the unemployed should continue to get medical benefits. There are nearly 1.4 million people out of work in Greece.
He said it was imperative for the government to create jobs and for banks to begin lending to create development. Asked about families where nobody has a job, he said that within days there would be a program. He said the three also talked about a lingering protest by farmers.
Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras said something had to be done to lessen unemployment for those under 25, which stands at 67.1 percent, but didn’t propose any answers. Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsis agreed to cutbacks in his ministry and with everything else that was said, but didn’t come up with any new ideas either.
The government is imposing more pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that some analysts said could push the unemployment rate to 30 percent or more. Samaras said one of his top priorities is job creation in the face of evidence that 887 jobs a day – all in the private sector – are being lost and while the government is under pressure to fire 150,000 state workers over the next three years.
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