Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2011
Greece's cabinet is set to meet later Sunday to approve the country's 2012 austerity budget, as well as a controversial plan to cut thousands of jobs from the public sector, as the government scrambles to secure badly needed aid from international creditors.
The extraordinary cabinet meeting comes just one day before European finance ministers are due to meet in Luxembourg to discuss Greece's progress on reforms, and follows three days of talks with a delegation of international auditors in Athens.
Late Saturday, Greece wound up a third day of talks with inspectors from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank—known at the troika—who will decide whether the country is eligible to receive further financial assistance.
Those talks have focused on a variety of reforms Greece must take, ranging from overhauling its judicial system to liberalizing closed professions and privatizing state assets. But the most thorny issue has been a proposal to transfer some 30,000 public workers into a special labor reserve at reduced pay in an effort to cut Greece's budget deficit.
"Talks on the labor reserve with the troika finished on Saturday," a finance ministry official said. "The results will be presented to the cabinet meeting today."
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