Greece

On Friday, February 20th Greece signed a joint statement with the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers which amounts to an abandonment of the programme on which Syriza won the election on January 25, as well as government policy statements made since then. What are the details of the deal?

Friday’s Eurogroup agreement amounts to the government’s capitulation to the Troika’s blackmail. The agreement provides for a four-month extension, not simply of the “loan agreement”, but, as is expressly stated, of the “programme”, that’s to say of the Memorandum itself.

Once again, any illusions that the negotiations with its creditors could ever yield something positive for Greece have now crumbled in the light of the recent Eurogroup meeting. The unanimous ultimatum of Greece’s so-called capitalist Eurozone “partners” to the new government and the overwhelming majority of the Greek people that support the government was once more a provocation.

After the breakdown of negotiations between the Greek government and the EU last week, the produced this article, which provides background information to the present impasse.

Tsipras and his finance minister Varoufakis have toured the European capitals in an attempt to muster support for their debt renegotiation policies but have been met with open hostility. The workers in Greece are rallying around what they regard as their government in a movement that could escalate in the coming weeks.

Last Sunday's government programme announcement by the Prime Minister did not contain the sort of backtracking that the ruling class and the Troika are seeking. The government and SYRIZA should maintain a dignified and firm position. A confrontation with the Troika and capital is inevitable given that they have no desire to negotiate with the  government. Rather they seek to humiliate it, have no qualms about undermining its commitments to the Greek people and even about expelling Greece from the Euro. Therefore, the important measures contained in the government's programme cannot be implemented unless these are supported by a socialist programme.

The election victory of Syriza in Greece marked a fundamental shift not only in the situation in Greece, but throughout Europe. A week after the elections we interviewed Ilias Kirousis, a member of the Communist Tendency of SYRIZA as well as the leadership of SYRIZA’s youth wing. Here Ilias gives us his analysis of the elections and the perspectives for the SYRIZA government.

The retreats of the Syriza leadership have not forestalled German ultimatums - The solution lies in radical policies; not in diplomacy. Denounce the debt - nationalise the banks - expropriate the oligarchy!

On the December 3, 1944, British snipers, the Athens police, and fascist paramilitaries opened fire on a demonstration of communist sympathisers in Athens’ Syntagma Square, leaving 28 dead. They were protesting against the provocations of the Greek bourgeois parties and the British imperialists, who were trying to derail and crush the mass revolutionary movement that had defeated the Nazis. Thus began the Battle of Athens.