Greek PM Tsipras appeals to parliament to back bailout

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras got the reforms through with the help of pro-European opposition parties.

(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti). People buy fruit at a market in central Athens, Tuesday, July 14, 2015.

The protests show the challenges Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces convincing a country whose economy has shrunk by a quarter in the last five years to accept further spending cuts.

The agreement sets a July 15 deadline for Greece to pass the austerity measures.

Tsipras said that while he didn’t believe in the deal, he had accepted it to avoid economic disaster.

The Greek Parliament has passed the austerity bill needed as the first step to open bailout negotiations, despite a significant level of dissent from the governing leftist Syriza party.

The ECB announced it was increasing emergency credit to Greek banks, adding another 900 million euros ($980 million) in support over one week.

In Berlin, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble insisted that growing calls to ax a portion of Greece’s 320 billion euro debt mountain would not be accepted and again raised the idea of a managed Greek exit from the euro. A total of 64 MPs voted No and six abstained.

Greek lawmakers backed a deeply contentious bailout package Thursday, clearing the first hurdle towards securing a rescue but leaving the radical left government in Athens weakened. Riot police battled youths who hurled petrol bombs for about an hour before the clashes died down.

Greece’s lawmakers approved tough new austerity measures demanded by European creditors as a precondition to begin talks on unlocking an 86 billion euro (US$94 billion) bailout package.

Numerous terms are the kind of austerity measures that Greeks voted against in the referendum, meaning the deal has proved controversial.

To the surprise of many, more than 61 percent of those who cast ballots in the plebiscite voted to reject the troika proposal. “On Monday morning, at 9.30 am, it was the most hard moment of my life”.

European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, sounds optimistic on Greece’s progress, while speaking at the press conference, Mr. Draghi said: “all my evidence leads me to say [that] we will be repaid as well as the International Monetary Fund, so that is off the table”.

“I don’t know, nobody knows at the moment how this should be possible without a haircut”, he said. “Nothing was certain and nothing is”, he told parliament. A banking source said the banks were ready to resume limited operations on Monday, but the government had yet to make that decision.

Despite the vote, 32 Members of Parliament of the Syriza party voted against the deal.