Ministers won’t budge about the Army and hospitals

The government appears divided on the issue of layoffs in the public sector, since, as the new round of ministerial meetings with deputy prime minister and Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos on the "new memorandum" shows, nobody wants to put his signature or link their ministry tenure to measures that will reduce their staff.

While yesterday a chief government player involved in the discussions stressed that the Troika insists on its demands for drastic cuts, opening up a door for layoffs in the narrow public sector too, in the new round of meetings today other government officials excluded the possibility of layoffs in the national Defence and Health sectors.

The same sources acknowledged that the negotiation is difficult and should be finished as soon as possible. But they stressed that "there is no issue of layoffs in the army" and the "sensitive" area of Health, as the government seeks to save 1 billion euros from medicines, 100 million from Health expenditure and 400 million from Defence this year.

As protothema.gr has already revealed, the infamous 10-page memo of our lenders mentions, among other things, the prospect of staff cuts in Health and Defense.

Meanwhile however, other government officials have told reporters that "everything is open" in terms of the future of labour relations in the private sector, as the Troika auditors do not seem willing to change their positions.