Workers and employees of Athens metro, urban train and the tram are facing wage cuts for the 4rth time in the last 2 years. Their salaries have been already reduced up to 45%. Now, the government wants to abolish their collective labor agreements that provide the minimum salaries for their particular sector and apply a payroll, common for all civil workers instead. The workers want to defend their co ...

The eviction of Athens' occupation points at the dead-end authorities in Greece are hastily driving themselves in.   In the early hours of December 20, a police unit drove down Acharnon, a busy thoroughfare in central Athens. Arriving at the imposing building lying at its junction with Cheyden St, they informed the occupants they would be conducting a "routine" check. Only a few hours later, the buildi ...

This is Greece and Europe in 2013! A documentary film on Golden Dawn, its promotion by the media, its co-operation with Greek police and the struggle against fascism in Greece.     Created by Network of Information and Solidarity for Antifascist and Anti-repressive Action in Greece   ...

The green crowd used to feel pretty rosy about Greece. After former Prime Minister George Papandreou was elected in 2009, he set up a government ministry to study the environment, energy, and climate change, and he talked up initiatives on eco-tourism and renewable energy. But now, after six years of recession, the country has begun buying into several new environmentally damaging development schemes to gen ...

By JUDY DEMPSEY BERLIN — The euro crisis has not been good for NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen has used every occasion to cajole alliance members into investing and collaborating more in defense. He said recently that allied defense expenditures had declined by more than $56 billion compared with 2009. Practically all of those cuts happened in Europe, reducing defense spending ...

Why not make slaves out of unemployed people? Unpaid work by unemployed people is the suggestion of the ex finance deputy minister, Petros Doukas. Mr Doukas outlined on his personal webpage a number of suggestions in order for Greece to exit the crisis. One of his brilliant suggestions is that unemployed people should offer unpaid work wherever the State needs them to. Also enterprises could be asked whethe ...

Consider it a mea culpa submerged in a deep pool of calculus and regression analysis: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist today acknowledged that the fund blew its forecasts for Greece and other European economies because it did not fully understand how government austerity efforts would undermine economic growth. The new and highly technical paper looks again at the issue of fiscal multipliers ...

Growers and shrinkers   The fastest growing and shrinking economies in 2013 MACAU will be the fastest growing economy this year, according to the latest estimates from our sister company, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Growth is expected to return to a faster pace as new casino projects are resumed and Chinese visitors (with rising wages) continue to raise gambling revenues. Mongolia, in second ...

Country faces year of destiny, with doubts about survival of government and of its eurozone membership as austerity bites In the three years that Greece has been engulfed by the drama of its debt, crises have come and gone. But the next 12 months are likely to be more critical yet with politicians and pundits predicting that 2013 will ultimately define whether Athens remains in the eurozone. For once, Greek ...

Tonia Katerini of Syriza describes the social solidarity movement rising as Greeks struggle for survival. The first problem is that in Greece now we have 25 per cent unemployment, with youth unemployment reaching 58 per cent and unemployment in areas that used to be highly industrialised sometimes reaching 70-80 per cent. Many industries either close because we have very low consumption or, as in the case o ...