C. Katrougalos for assessment: Not going to sacrifice the interests of workers and the Greek people

The will of the Greek government to immediately close the agreement for the completion of the second evaluation, provided, however, that will not further restrict the…
rights of the Greek people and there will be no additional austerity, expressed by the deputy minister of Foreign affairs Giorgos Katrougalos, immediately after the completion of the visit of the commissioner for Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici in Athens.
“I’m not going to sacrifice the interests of workers and the Greek people moving to any decline in the principle of the thing. We want to instantly close the deal, a fair deal, but which will not burden further austerity, so it’s a budget neutral deal,” said mr Katrougalos during the regular periodic briefing for the diplomatic editors for the two cycles of competence, economic diplomacy and european affairs. Stressed, yes, that collective bargaining remains at the centre of the claims.
Continuing on the same wavelength, he blamed the responsibility for the non-completion of the second assessment in the irrational and contradictory demands of the IMF, noting that the need to immediately close the assessment is no longer invoked only from Greece but also from all the officials of the EU, even by some who in the past had not been particularly warm relationship with our country. In support thereof, he referred to the climate that he encountered during his visit in Brussels during the individual meetings with the vice-president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and the European commissioner Pierre Moscovici, observing that “there have been considerable convergence with most of the european institutions”.
Then referred to the prospects of the European Union, in view of the debate on the Future of which will culminate in a summit meeting in Rome in March. In this context he talked about the strategic reorientation of european social democracy from their old alliance with neoliberal forces in an unfinished, but apparently emerging effort of a new progressive alliance with the forces of Ecology and of the beyond social democracy’s Left. Although it didn’t work to bring out president to the european Parliament, argued that it arose solemnly the break-in of the “great alliance” between conservative and social democratic forces in the european Parliament. The change of the correlations of the political dynamic in Europe is the speed of the glaciers, slowly, but is irreversible advance when it happens, it added.
In this direction, has included and the visit to Berlin, where he has been invited by the Parliamentary Group of the social democratic Party of Germany to speak in Μπούντεστανγκ, in the event that is being organized tomorrow for a social Europe. In the context of this visit, it will also speak at the Committee on European Affairs of the German Bundestag and met with the chairman of the Budget Committee. You will meet with a representative of Die Linke Axel Τρόοστ, who asked the scientific service of the Μπούντεστανγκ to issue the opinion from which it became known that the claim Schaeuble, that it is a necessary supposedly constitutionally new vote if the IMF leave the Greek program, it wasn’t true.
To a question if there is similar scope for cooperation and in Greece, stated that “anyone who pursues a strategic approach with social Democracy in Europe as a new base correlations to break free of the austerity policies and to have new policies in Europe, for reasons of consistency it should have the same policy and on the inside”. He noted, however, that this is completely dependent on the choices that will make the so-called centre-left in Greece, from the if, so, I wean from the neoliberal options σύμπλευσης with the SW, as did the European social Democrats.
Source: RES