The government decided to suspend thousands of civil servants

In villa Maximos the conference of the Government Council of Administrative Reform, chaired by the Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, was completed around noon.
The Council focused on the restructuring of ministries and entities since today, the fate of 4.900 employees from ministries and entities of the public sector will be judged. They will be suspended before mid September.
The consolidation of Defense Industries is swiftly moving along. It is a procedure through which there will be a distinct cost reduction while it is not unlikely that a number of employees will be fired.
The final decisions will be taken during September, since Greece has made a commitment towards Troika to dismiss 2.000 people until the end of the year.

The public sector demonstrates against the layoffs

ADEDY, the Supreme Administration of Civil Servants Trade Unions has called a meeting today with its federations in order to decide about the culmination of its mobilizations against the “ongoing pogrom of layoffs of dozens of thousands of civil servants”. A strike and a rally have already been scheduled in Athens for Thursday while on Friday the General Council of ADEDY will meet in order to decide about strikes during September.
ADEDY accuses the government of “imposing the complete dissolution of public services in Education, Health and Local Authority, rushing to realize all of troika’s demands”.

The minister of Finance rejects debt haircut

Giannis Stournaras declared in the german newspaper Handelsblatt that “Greece doesn’t need a second debt haircut because the country can reduce its debt in other ways, like the easing of conditions in the already existing aid packages”. The minister of Finance talked about “returning to the debt purchase markets” during the second semester of 2014 so that we “test the waters”.