
feet), tapping some euro400 billion ($546 billion) worth of real estate. But its efforts to cut back while reviving a fast-contracting economy amid record unemployment have faltered, sparking new market distress.įinance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the new property tax will be levied over the next two years and will cost citizens an average of euro4 ($5.53) per square meter (10.76 sq. Over the past 20 months, Greece\'s Socialist government has cut pensions and salaries while raising taxes and retirement ages. Germany has taken on a leading role in helping to bail out other members of the 17-nation eurozone, but is demanding changes to Europe\'s fiscal policy be made in the long term.
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Roesler told the Monday edition of Germany\'s Welt daily there should be no limits to thinking of possible scenarios of how to end the euro crisis. The ministry had no immediate comment on the report Sunday. The statement by Philipp Roesler, who is also economy minister, comes amid an unsourced report in Der Spiegel weekly that Germany\'s finance ministry has been working up two different scenarios to accommodate a Greek default. In Germany, the government\'s vice chancellor raised the possibility of letting Greece default, should the necessary instruments be available for such a move. He said he had discussed forming a coalition government with the conservatives, who he said were not mature enough for it, and still are notĭebt-crippled Greece urgently needs to keep a program of cutbacks on track to secure the continued flow of international rescue loans - worth euro219 billion ($302.6 billion) - protecting it from a catastrophic bankruptcy. Papandreou, whose party is trailing the main opposition conservatives in opinion polls, also ruled out early elections. He said Greece is in a constant fight to ensure it can continue paying salaries and pensions, which we guarantee, and rejected talk of the country leaving the common European currency and returning to its old monetary unit, the drachma.įor a country to leave - any country, I\'m not necessarily talking about Greece - it will create a domino effect, a pressure on other countries, and will remain as a wound, if not the beginning of the breakup of the entire system, he said. It is better that we all lose something than lose everything, forever, Prime Minister George Papandreou said at a news conference in Greece\'s second-largest city of Thessaloniki. The government also decided, in a symbolic move aimed at a public angry at politicians, to dock a month\'s pay from all elected officials - from the head of state to the country\'s 325 mayors.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - Greece\'s cash-strapped government said Sunday it would impose a new property tax on top of existing austerity measures, to compensate for a revenue shortfall that is threatening to disrupt its vital international bailout program.
