Kouvelis’ move towards an agreement

Negotiations between government partners on labour issues continued until late last night.

The proposal by Democratic Left president Fotis Kouvelis to the parliamentary group of his party was to vote against the labour measures, leaving some room for a rapprochement decision.

According to colleagues of PASOK president Evangelos Venizelos, in a telephone conversation he had with Fotis Kouvelis, the latter allowed for a possibility of reaching an agreement and did not seem to reject all discussion on the matter, as long as there is willingness for further improvements.

Kouvelis spoke yesterday with prime minister Antonis Samaras, to whom he explained his disagreement with the improvements of the new package of measures. Kouvelis’ colleagues said it was an informative discussion to reach a deal and avoid a government crisis.

A close associate of the DIMAR president, Demetris Chatzisokratis, who has undertaken negotiations with the economic team of the government, said the three scenarios to exit the governmental crisis require the government to:

1.  take back the measures on labour issues
2.  withdraw these measures temporarily and have them discussed again in due course
3.  bring them to parliament for a vote and DIMAR will vote against them

During the meeting of the DIMAR parliamentary group, Kouvelis said that the voice of the party had begun to be heard in Europe. He added that leading institutional factors (he mentioned Olli Rehn and Martin Schultz) admit that without the participation of DIMAR the measures would have been even harder.

Colleagues of the President of the Democratic Left said they are not going to test the government's consistency and that even if they ultimately vote against labour measures, they will retain their confidence in the government.