POLITICS & POLICY
Greece – Debt crisis: New measures approved
In order to obtain creditors’ funds, Greece has passed unpopular pension and tax reforms early this morning. These measures should allow the country to meet a 3.5% budget surplus target before 2018, so reacquiring trust and bond market access. The reform package raises income taxes for high earners but also reduces benefits for poor pensioners, and introduces a national monthly pension of 384 euros, obtainable after 20 years of work. The opposition party PASOK is highly critical of the reform, maintaining that Tsipras’s government has once again failed to avoid austerity.
Source: Times of Malta, 9/05/2016
The Netherlands – Social situation: Low income families
According to CBS, in 2014, around 12% of Dutch children were living in households whose income was too low to meet daily necessities. In the past six years, the number of low income families in the Netherlands has risen significantly. Out of 421,000 children living in these conditions today, around 131,000 have faced the situation for four years or more. CBS avoids talking about “poverty”, but notes that 51% of low income families cannot afford buying new clothes, and 66% of them cannot afford a holiday of at least one week a year.
Source: Dutchnews, 9/05/2016
THE STATEMENT
“You’re not a leftist. You’re an opportunist who will do everything to stay in power”.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Leader of Greece’s New Democracy Party (to Alexis Tsipras)
Source: Ekathimerini, 08/05/2016
NUMBERS
14
The number of arrests after anti-austerity protests in Athens on Sunday.
Source: Ekathimerini, 9/05/2016
2.5%
Hungary’s expected GDP in 2016.
Source: Bbj, 9/05/2016
Photo Credits CC: European People’s Party
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