Grécia : A
“terceira” velocidade da Europa a duas velocidades…
Para
os mais distraídos. Merkel cedeu e aceitou a "Europa a duas
velocidades". O conceito ainda tem que ser melhor definido e
apurado mas já foi aceite por Merkel.
"Há
ainda um outro vector deste debate que ajuda a complicar as coisas.
Berlim e Paris (que não se entendem sobre o euro) entenderam-se
sobre outra questão que vai estar presente em Roma: que o futuro da
Europa passa por uma integração a várias velocidades. Os franceses
sempre foram favoráveis à ideia. Merkel defendia que os (agora) 27
deviam caminhar juntos. Esta cedência, cujos contornos ainda não
são conhecidos, traz consigo mais um problema para Portugal e para
outros países, mais distantes do centro político e económico da
Europa." (…) ( Público 26 de Fevereiro de 2017 / Teresa de
Sousa )
OVOODOCORVO
Alexis
Tsipras’ €100 billion problem
Elected
on a promise to protect ordinary Greeks from austerity measures,
Syriza is now struggling to implement them.
By WILL
HORNER 2/21/17, 1:10 PM CET Updated 2/28/17, 7:00 AM CET
THESSALONIKI, Greece
— As opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras promised that “not a
single house” would be taken from Greeks who can’t pay their
mortgage.
It’s now haunting
him as prime minister.
Tsipras’ left-wing
party Syriza came to power on a wave of popular protest at the height
of the European debt crisis. After a dramatic showdown with Greece’s
international creditors in July 2015, Tsipras chose to prioritize
continued membership of the eurozone over doing away with austerity.
The choice was controversial and left many people feeling betrayed.
Under pressure from
creditors to strengthen the banking system, the Syriza-led government
reluctantly agreed last year to allow auctions of properties seized
from homeowners and small businesses who foreclose on their loans —
the same people Tsipras had promised to protect as opposition
leader.
But the government’s
attempts to recover the approximately €108 billion of
non-performing loans which make up 50 percent of all Greece’s bank
portfolios have hit stiff opposition from a growing protest movement
that has prevented all but a few hundred of the thousands of planned
auctions from taking place. So the stock of “non-performing”
loans continues to go up, talk of “Grexit” that has dogged the
eurozone for seven years refuses to go away, and the prime minister’s
popularity is going down — including among the protest movements
that brought him to power in the first place.
Activists from the
“Against the Auctions” movement gather in law courts across the
country every Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. to physically prevent the
foreclosure auctions from taking place. A fortnight ago, as usual,
around 50 of them marched from courtroom to courtroom in
Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, and up to the judge’s bench,
demanding to know what auctions were taking place.
After a hasty
assembly in the hallway, they rushed for one courtroom in which the
foreclosure of a 108-square-meter shop was taking place. Owned
jointly by a father and daughter, it was being auctioned by Piraeus
Bank.
“There
is rage, anger. There are many folks that believed in Syriza, but
their hope is gone for good” — Schoolteacher Ilias
Smilios
Ilias Smilios, an
unassuming middle-aged school teacher, led the group towards the
presiding notary. “You are implementing a theft,” he shouted.
“The auction is cancelled because we are here. We are not letting
it happen.”
“There is rage,
anger,” Smilios told POLITICO in a café opposite the Thessaloniki
courthouse, after successfully halting the auction. “There are many
folks that believed in Syriza, but their hope is gone for good.”
‘It will become
law’
Ironically, the
anti-foreclosure movement’s slogan — “Not a single house in the
hands of a banker” — was one which Tsipras uttered himself back
in January 2015, during a speech to jubilant supporters of Syriza two
days before its election victory on a radical anti-austerity
platform.
“We have a plan,
and we commit to put an end to this nightmare of auctions of primary
residences. Not a single house in the hands of a banker!” Tsipras
told the cheering crowd. “Today it is a chant, from Monday it will
become a law of the state.”
The bitter irony of
the current situation is not lost on his party. Last year, Syriza’s
own newspaper published an open letter to Tsipras and Justice
Minister Stavros Kontonis from an anonymous Thessaloniki debtor,
identified as Michalis P.
The letter was
described in the paper as “the desperate cry of Michalis P.,
unemployed, diagnosed with a disability, a father of a large family
and an autistic child [whose] only house in Thessaloniki is in danger
of being lost in the auctions and as a result seven people will live
on the street.” The case was a boon for the anti-auctions movement
and on September 28 several hundred people blocked the auction of his
home.
“From that point
on, the movement changed throughout all Greece, and the movement
became more decisive,” said Smilios, who can be seen in videos from
that day, pumping his fists and leading the chants from a table top,
as riot police struggle to regain control.
The government
insists homes are safe. In a statement, the Ministry of Economy said
current legislation meant “60 percent of primary residences of
households in distress” have protection against foreclosure.
“We have set a
specific operational target [to reduce non-performing loans] and so
far all quarterly intermediate targets have been met,” said the
ministry, while acknowledging that the level of bad loans is higher
now than two years ago.
Syriza MPs and
senior party members who were asked by POLITICO to comment on the
foreclosures program either didn’t respond or declined to talk. The
government’s press secretariat didn’t respond to repeated
requests to provide comment for this story.
After the Greek
government agreed at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on
February 20 to discuss further reforms of its tax and pension systems
and the labor market, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos was forced
to deny rumors that the decision had led to tension within the ruling
party. “There isn’t an ounce of truth in what is being said,”
the Greek media quoted him as saying.
The government said
it would legislate “countermeasures” to offset any financial harm
encountered by ordinary Greeks as a result of such new measures. “For
every euro that burdens [citizens], there will be a euro in relief,”
government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told reporters.
Notaries on strike
In response to the
chaos in the courts, Greek notaries nationwide decided not to carry
out foreclosures of any residential property. Interviewed at her
office, the president of the Thessaloniki Notaries Association,
Ioanna Bilisi-Chrousala, said the decision was taken to prevent “a
big social problem” and widespread homelessness.
Before each
Wednesday’s bout of auctions, notaries across Thessaloniki fax
their foreclosure documents to Bilisi-Chrousala asking permission to
go ahead. Giorgos Seretis, general secretary of the Notaries
Association, showed POLITICO one such document, which he said was a
request for permission from Bilisi-Chrousala to carry out a
foreclosure on a business. “It is a business foreclosure, so this
will be done,” he said.
But residential
foreclosures for debts owed to banks and the Greek tax office, or
between individuals if the property is the primary residence, are not
being signed, he said. “If it is an industry or a warehouse it is
allowed, if it is a residency it is not allowed.”
Bilisi-Chrousala
says notaries are pushing the government to make good on its word and
pass a law banning foreclosures of primary residence. However, the
Against the Auctions movement doesn’t consider them to be its
allies: Notaries are often on the receiving end of abuse in court,
and Bilisi-Chrousala says she has been personally attacked by members
of the movement.
“We protect the
primary residences and we have declared that publicly,” said
Bilisi-Chrousala. “We don’t agree with these protesters, they
don’t know what they want. They don’t only block the foreclosures
of primary residences, but they stop the whole civil procedures of
the country.”
“The
pressure from the banks is so much … that we have had to establish
here psychological support groups for indebted consumers”
— Economist Panagiotis Kalofonos
She said the focus
should be on auctioning off high-value industrial properties to raise
money for the tax office and to help banks recover loans. “This is
the philosophy of the economy,” she said.
Psychological
support
Successive
governments have introduced laws for struggling debtors to register
their primary residence for protection against foreclosure if it
doesn’t exceed a certain threshold value. But Panagiotis Kalofonos,
economist for the Union of Working Consumers of Greece, said the
threshold had been progressively lowered. Now standing at €120,000,
it protects fewer primary residences and tends to shield only working
people and “not traders or merchants,” he said.
Kalofonos’
consumer association helps struggling debtors to apply for primary
residence protection and provides legal advice. It now also offers
psychological support as financial difficulties often lead to
mental-health issues, alcoholism, suicide attempts, and divorce.
“The pressure from
the banks is so much … that we have had to establish here
psychological support groups for indebted consumers,” he said.
“[The debt
collectors] can call you any time of the day or night until 8 or 9
o’clock, and they are not discreet at all,” he said. “It
doesn’t matter what you tell them. You can tell them: ‘Look, I
just lost my job, my mother died’ — true cases — and they will
say OK and call you again three hours later.”
Authors:
Will Horner
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