Press views Greek 'heroes', French blues | |||||
The French press is scathing in its assessment of the team's performance. In Greece, however, the mood is somewhat different. "The Blues [Les Bleus] who were kicked out of Euro 2004 in Lisbon yesterday were a team of pygmies," says Ouest France.
"The French team, lacking anything better, produced an old folks' match compared with the Portugal-England match of the day before, displaying no rhythm, no grit, nothing of anything at all." "They've had their chips, made to a Greek recipe, which will be giving us indigestion for a long time." Exposed For the sports daily L'Equipe, "France left on this Euro championship the perfectly forgettable mark of its disorganisation and its impotence". The match against Greece, the paper says, was "a derby between the current two weakest teams" which precipitated "a well-deserved elimination". The Blues "now look totally exposed: lack of desire, lack of ideas, lack of enjoyment, lack of collective talent. Apart from two or three individuals blessed with genius, they have nothing much left. The time has perhaps come 'to make a clean break with the past'," it says. "Fielding a defence full of holes, their attack strategy disorganised, the Blues logically go out of the tournament," adds a more restrained Le Monde. Olympian By contrast, the mood in the Greek dailies is summed up in one word: ecstatic.
Under the banner headline: "1-0 Wonderland Greece", Ethnoswrites: "The great Michel Platini's eyes at the end said it all. At the time when the cameras were showing close-ups of the dumbfounded and humiliated faces of the French and of the proud but also dumbfounded Greeks, the "high priest" of French soccer had bent down his head and was trying to hide. "The only thing he saw was Greeks, Greek heroes." "We made it! Our national football team made a dream come true," I Kathimerini says. "Zidane's fantastic party appeared to be hypnotised by our cleverly assembled national team, which did not grant the French the slightest chance to show its capability." "The miracle has been wrought!" says a banner headline in To Vima. "There goes France as well! And who is left now? Whoever it is, we are not afraid! And this because we are one of the great teams. They are the ones who should be afraid, not us," says Ta Nea. Elevtherotipia sums up the prevailing sentiment in three words: "Vive la Grece!" BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. | |||||
sâmbătă, 3 decembrie 2011
Press views Greek 'heroes', French blues
No rhythm, no grit, nothing 
Property tax In already taxed Grece
Property tax
Greece is also proposing an emergency property tax, to be paid through household energy bills.
However, Mr Traa said this was not a good idea.
"In our view, you should not be drawn to higher and higher taxes on the limited tax base," he said. "This will neither be economically or politically sustainable."
He said a more efficient tax system would be more helpful and called for a "much stronger resolve to tackle the problem of tax evasion".
"Greece cannot achieve the consolidation through spending cuts alone.
"The increase in revenues... must come from improving collection rather than by increasing or by introducing new taxes."
The chairman of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, Constantine Michalos, said the danger from new taxes could be social breakdown.
"In periods of recession the imposition of new taxes aggravates and increases unemployment, and if we reach the 20% unemployment level then economically there is an imminent risk that social cohesion will explode," he said.
European finance ministers also told Greece last week that they doubted the property tax would be successful and that more cuts would be more effective.
Continue reading the main storyAccording to an apparent email to the Greek government and published by an Athens newspaper, the Troika of the EU, European Central Bank and IMF have listed 15 measures to be implemented.
These includes demands that Greece make 100,000 employees in state-controlled companies redundant, which is 20,000 more than previously planned.
The continuing crisis has again unsettled financial markets, with share markets in Europe and the US down by more than 2% on Monday.
Earlier, Mr Venizelos said European and international institutions were using Greece as a "scapegoat" to "hide their own lack of competence to manage the crisis".
In a statement, Mr Venizelos also said that Greece had been "blackmailed and humiliated".
He said that to stop this situation, the country had to move ahead with its deficit reduction work so it could meet its financial targets.
Mr Venizelos said: "If we want to stabilise the situation... we have to make three large strategic decisions as part of our national strategy."
The three strategic decisions he highlighted were:
- Greece achieving its 2011 and 2012 fiscal targets
- Achieve annual budget surpluses "as soon as possible"
- Carry out structural changes to allow Greece to become more competitive and productive
Greece says debt talks to avert default 'productive'
Greece says it has held "productive and substantive" talks with its debt inspectors aimed at deciding if Athens should get more bailout money.
Discussions between Greece, the International Monetary Fund and European authorities will resume on Tuesday.
No further details of Monday's three-hours talks were made public.
Global markets tumbled on Monday amid fears Greece will default and a call from the IMF for deeper spending cuts.
Monday evening's teleconference was between the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Mr Evangelos Venizelos, and senior representatives of the Troika - the name for the European Central Bank, European Commission, and IMF.
There is concern among Greece's international creditors that it is not doing enough to get its spending under control and to warrant the next 8bn-euro (£7bn; $11bn) instalment of its rescue loan.
On Monday the IMF told Greece it needs better tax collection and deeper spending cuts, not higher taxes, to avert a debt default.
Fears that Greece will default and send shockwaves through the global economy saw stock markets tumble, and the euro fall and oil prices fall.
The FTSE 100 index closed down 2% and France's Cac fell 3%. On Wall Street the Dow Jones recovered from earlier heavy losses to end 0.9% lower.
Athens needs the next tranche of bailout aid by next month to avoid defaulting on its debt.
The loan comes with the condition that Greece dramatically reduce its deficit, something that it plans to do by cutting the size of the state sector through redundancies, pay cuts and privatisations.
The IMF representative for Greece, Bob Traa, who is in Athens, said this was of crucial importance: "The public sector is very large. Another central element in our view must be to reduce public sector spending.
"This will inevitably require the closure of inefficient state entities as well as reductions in the excessively large public sector workforce and generous public sector wages, which in some cases are above those of the equivalent private sector workers."
source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
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