Greece’s creditors say satisfied by second reform vote

The number of disaffected Syriza MPs, who see the reforms as a betrayal of the anti-austerity platform that brought their left-wing party to power in January, shrunk slightly compared to last week’s similar vote – from 38 to 36.

Of the ruling SYRIZA party’s 149 members, 31 voted against the reforms and five abstained.

“‘We must all adapt ourselves to this new situation, ‘ he said, claiming that ‘Europe’s conservative forces had achieved only a Pyrrhic victory over Greece.'”.

He also said that those disagreeing with him should “not to hide behind the security of my signature” and added that he was fully aware that he had “assumed responsibility for a hard compromise…but one that keeps us alive to carry on fighting”.

Greece’s worldwide creditors are satisfied with the Greek parliament’s adoption Thursday of a second batch of reforms needed to unlock another bailout for the cash-strapped country, an EU official said. But that is still roughly a quarter of the party’s MPs.

Together with his coalition partners from the right-wing nationalist Independent Greeks, Tsipras has 162 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

“We really don’t know what lies ahead with their tactics”, said the owner of a busy café near parliament.

At the time, there were mixed signals out of Athens on whether experts from the commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund would be welcomed back to Greece at all for bailout-related talks.

The government hopes the new bailout talks can conclude before August. 20, when Greece must repay a debt worth more than $3.27 billion to the European Central Bank.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s upgraded Greece’s sovereign credit rating by two notches. A few teenagers threw gasoline bombs at riot police, but no injuries or arrests were reported.

Greece and its creditors last week struck a bailout-for-reforms deal aimed at preventing Athens from crashing out of the eurozone as it struggles to pay its enormous debts.

The fact that these measures were not included in the bill aroused some media speculation that Athens was backtracking on reform commitments. “It’s extremely important to wrap up this prior actions procedure so that we can start negotiations on Friday“, Tsakalotos told lawmakers Wednesday.

The 977-page bill up for debate from Wednesday night will simplify the process required for courts to reach a decision and write European Union rules for handling failing banks into Greek law.

Mr. Tsipras said that his government would never allow banks to seize the primary residences of Greeks.

(ShareCast News) – The Greek parliament approved a second set of reforms asked for by creditors in a bid to pave the way for negotiations on a third bail-out package, but some analysts warned the Greek crisis had already caused irreparable damage to the euro area’s architecture.

In its quarterly report, the IOBE institute said that capital controls imposed last month to stop a bank run pushing the financial system into collapse would exact a heavy toll across the economy. Greek leftists say it violates rights to a fair hearing and could favour creditors and hurt workers in bankruptcy cases.