Athens struggles for support, Finance Ministers to meet

Greece's new Finance Minister Evangelos said today he would meet his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble to discuss how to return Greece's economy to growth after three years of recession. "We have agreed with Schaeuble to meet in Berlin to discuss growth issues," Venizelos told parliament's economic affairs committee.

The minister did not provide a date but he is expected to be in Berlin early next month. Greece clinched the agreement of EU-IMF inspectors yesterday to its planned new austerity package.

An opinion poll put Greece's conservative opposition – which is refusing to support the plan – 2.1 points ahead of Prime Minister George Papandreou's PASOK party and showed three quarters of Greeks were opposed to the raft of tax hikes and spending cuts that will hit them hard.

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels promised more money to help Greece stave off looming bankruptcy, provided its parliament enacts the debt-cutting plan, finalized in fraught last-minute talks with international lenders.

"We have agreed that there will be a new program for Greece on which the Greek parliament will have to vote next week," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.

If parliament does not pass the measures, the EU and International Monetary Fund have said they will not release a vital 12 billion euro funding tranche and Athens will run out of cash within days.

Papandreou, who won a confidence vote this week with 155 votes in the 300-strong parliament, has ditched his former finance minister and appointed party rival Evangelos Venizelos to sell the five-year plan to his party and a skeptical public.

Venizelos said yesterday the new draft laws, the mid-term plan and a separate implementation law will be approved by parliament by June 30.

The main opposition New Democracy party has said it will vote against the mid-term plan though its leader Antonis Samaras has said the party would support some measures. It agrees with the government on privatizations.

A German finance ministry spokesman said the euro zone expected not just the government to carry the measures but that broad consensus was needed.

Greece accepted a package of 110 billion euros of EU/IMF loans in May 2010 but now needs a second bailout of a similar size to meet its financial obligations until the end of 2014, when it hopes to return to capital markets for funding.

The euro zone wants Greece's private bondholders to roll over as much as 30 billion euros of sovereign debt as part of a new package of emergency support for Athens.

At the EU summit in Brussels, Papandreou promised to push through radical economic reform after Venizelos clinched agreement with EU and IMF inspectors on extra tax rises and spending cuts to plug a 3.8 billion euro funding gap.

But Greeks continued their now daily protests against the measures which many feel unfairly punish ordinary people.