Calamos Supports Greece
GreekReporter.comGreek NewsEconomyPapandreou: Europe Needs Investment To Avoid Recession

Papandreou: Europe Needs Investment To Avoid Recession

Europe must invest to avoid recession becoming the next stage of the sovereign debt crisis, former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said Friday.
“We socialists know we must be fiscally responsible,” Papandreou told the convention of the Party of European Socialists here. “If every EU state just cut their budget and there was no stimulus at all…we would just spiral into recession.”
He said measures which would help Europe out of crisis include a financial transaction tax, the introduction of a single euro-zone debt instrument, and a tax on carbon emissions.
He also said that his decision to call a referendum on the latest EU bailout package for Greece, which led to the introduction of a government of national unity led by former European Central Bank Vice-President Lucas Papademos, was to fight vested interests within Greece.
“I called for a referendum to redistribute power, to give power to the people, to voice their will to go beyond vested interests of conservative establishments,” Papandreou said. “We are making deep changes in an establishment that does not want to change, so I wanted the people of Greece to decide,”
Papandreou, leader of the PASOK pan-Hellenic socialist party, said the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis is now systemic and that “we are all PIGS”, referring to the unflattering acronym given to Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
“This crisis is systemic, this crisis has hit us all, it΄s widening and it is spreading,” he said. “We need to move fast together.”
(source: Dow Jones)

See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!



Related Posts