Austerity Fight in Europe

Austerity Fight in Europe: EU Meets, Greeks in the Streets

Battlelines drawn as EU bailouts demand more and more from struggling nations

- Common Dreams staff

Riot police and protesters face off on the streets of Athens as fight against austerity continues. (Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)As ministers and heads of state from EU member countries met in Brussels on Thursday, tens of thousands of Greeks—including angry citizens, students, and workers—took to the streets of Athens marking the clear division lines between one Europe demanding ever deeper social cuts and those poised to continue their fight against a top-down austerity regime that has frayed the very notion of a unified Eurozone.
The Guardian is providing ongoing live coverage of the day's events, already reporting that riot police have attempted to clear Syntagma Square, firing off toxic teargas cannisters. Some protesters have responded with molotov cocktails and petrol bombs.
"Enough is enough. They've dug our graves, shoved us in and we are waiting for the priest to read the last words," Konstantinos Balomenos, a 58-year-old worker at a water utility whose wage has been halved to 900 euros and has two unemployed sons, told Reuters.

"This austerity is making all of Europe's south rebel, the euro will be destroyed," he said.
Reuters adds:

Greece is stuck in its worst downturn since World War Two and must make at least 11.5 billion euros of cuts to satisfy the "troika" of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, and secure the next tranche of a 130-billion-euro bailout.

"Agreeing to catastrophic measures means driving society to despair and the consequences as well as the protests will then be indefinite," said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the GSEE private sector union, one of two major unions that represent about 2 million people, or half of Greece's workforce.