Deputy Agricultural Minister Maximos Charakopoulos resigned from his cabinet position on Saturday evening claiming disagreement with the milk reform. However he would vote in favor of the controversial multi-bill on Sunday in order not to hinder the “proper funding of the country.”
The multi-bill containing major reforms of the trading regulations is a precondition for the release of the next bailout 9-billion-euro bailout installment.
Charakopoulos’s resignation 24 hours before the crucial voting almost went unnoticed and media did not make a buzz about it. Why? Most likely in order to avoid a deterioration of an already bad atmosphere within the Greek coalition government as quite a number of lawmakers raise objections against several bill provisions that hurt major sectors of the Greek economy like milk producers, bakers, pharmacists etc.
Greece’s coalition government has a thin majority of 153 seats in a Parliament of 300.
Unionists of public and private sector ADEDY and GESEE and left opposition parties have called protests outside the Parliament on Sunday.
At the same time, technicians at private television networks went on a 24-hour strike on Sunday following a 5-hour work stoppage on Saturday. They oppose the multi-bill provision that opens their profession to unlicensed labor.
At the end of voting, closed professions will be open and the multi-nationals and rich are expected to rush to Greece. If hurdles in taxation and bureaucracy will fall, Greece will finally manage to get the development and growth it has been awaiting since the beginning of the economic crisis.
PS And jobless will finally get jobs earning salaries they do not cover their basic needs 🙂
Does that include doctors, lawyers and engineers, which I think are the professions of something like 80% of Greek MP’s, or are their own little clubs somehow exempt from being opened up to lesser creatures?
what do you mean? that anyone can be a doctor without a doctor diploma?