Financial Times
June 22, 2011
George Papandreou is proving to be a fighter. The Greek prime minister has won the first of three crucial votes in parliament – essentially the right to continue in office. The other two will be tougher: in the coming days, he must get parliament to back a fresh round of austerity measures, and approve the legislation needed to implement them. Only then will Mr Papandreou get what he and Greece desperately need – a further €12bn of European Union and International Monetary Fund cash.
The result of Tuesday’s vote does not lessen the likelihood that Greece will have to restructure its debt. In any case, the confidence vote Mr Papandreou most needs to win is from the demonstrators on the streets. Yet the parliamentary ballot was worth winning, all the same: it has halted, if only for a moment, the country’s descent into meltdown. The prime minister still has a mountain to climb to get his most intractable party MPs to back further reforms, including a fantastical plan to privatise €50bn of state assets by 2015. That does nothing to address Greece’s immediate need for the extra €12bn.
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