Spain......
PP: ex-treasurer cannot back up new “lies”
Conservative lawmakers divided over potential for Bárcenas’ revelations to sink ruling party
EL PAÍS Madrid 8 JUL 2013 - 18:52 CET
The Popular Party (PP) leadership believes former party treasurer Luis Bárcenas has nothing to back up his latest revelations concerning the illegal financing of the party published over the weekend.
“I can assure you that of those things said [by Bárcenas in the media], the lies are not documented,” PP secretary general María Dolores de Cospedal told reporters at the party’s Madrid headquarters after a meeting with leaders on Monday morning. “It’s as clear as that.”
The remarks from the PP number two constitute the first official political reaction to new revelations by Bárcenas published in El Mundo newspaper on Sunday that the PP has been illegally financing itself for at least the last 20 years, receiving cash donations from constructions firms and other businesses in exchange for contracts from PP-run administrations. The former PP moneyman, who gave the interview before he was imprisoned a week and a half ago, said the release of all the documents he possesses would be enough to “bring down the government.”
It was the first time he has publicly confirmed the revelations published in EL PAÍS that he had run a parallel accounting system for the PP.
Cospedal added that Bárcenas’ specific accusation regarding the payment of a commission in exchange for a municipal contract in Castilla-La Mancha, where she is regional premier, was “absolutely false.” “The best thing is transparency. To deduce from the signature on a contract that there is a commission is absurd. It is absolutely false,” she said.
She also denied the PP had pressured Bárcenas into publicly refuting having compiled the ledgers showing a parallel accounting system, as published in EL PAÍS on January 31.
The secretary general of the governing party also launched a message to try to calm nervous PP members worried about what Bárcenas may have up his sleeve. “The PP has a clear, transparent accounting system that the whole of Spain knows, always audited by Court of Accounts and always approved. We are very calm. It has never had a stain of illegality about it.”
PP leaders are in two camps over the Bárcenas case. On the one hand are those who believe he has the documents to back up what he is saying; on the other are those who think he doesn’t. But what they all now agree on is that their former party treasurer has turned blackmailer. “It is clearly a threat,” said one PP official. “He says he has papers that could bring down the government. Well, either get them out or stop bluffing.”
Following the publication of the new allegations on Sunday, private prosecutors in the case against Bárcenas have announced that they will ask the judge investigating the case, Pablo Ruz, to call Bárcenas and his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, into court to respond.
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Greece......
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_09/07/2013_508286
Greece, troika agree to public sector worker dismissal reserve
Public-sector employees will remain on the “mobility and reallocation scheme” for eight months and must accept any other job offered to them or be dismissed, Administration Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Tuesday in comments broadcast on private Mega TV from Athens. He said priority will be given to people who joined the civil service after taking entrance exams (ASEP) rather than those who entered via “the back door.” Euroarea governments on Monday agreed to release 3 billion euros ($3.86 billion) of aid for Greece, seeking to buy enough financial calm to prevent another debt-crisis showdown until after Germany’s elections in September. They told Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s government it must step up the reform of tax administration and modernize the public sector. “Without agreement with the troika on the mobility scheme, euro area finance ministers would not have approved yesterday [Monday] the latest release of aid for Greece,” Mitsotakis said. “The issue was very high on the agenda for the troika,” he said. A total of 12,500 civil servants, which includes the first 4,200 lined up for this month, must be placed in the program by the end of September, according to an e-mailed statement today from Mitsotakis’s Administration and E-Governance Ministry. The remaining 8,300 will come from Greece’s municipal police forces. Another 12,500 public-sector workers, coming from all ministries, must be included by the end of the year, Mitsotakis said.
Mandatory exits
The mobility plan is separate from another commitment agreed to with the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission in February 2012 to proceed with 15,000 “mandatory exits” from the public sector, the ministry said Tuesday.That will entail dismissing 4,000 people outright this year and 11,000 in 2014. Mitsotakis said the closing of state broadcaster ERT in June made up 2,000 of the 2013 dismissals and another 2,000 redundancies will be identified by the end of the year. For every five civil servants who retire, a new one will be hired and for every dismissal, one person will be recruited for employment in departments that need boosting such as the Greek Coast Guard, which is under pressure given Greece’s large illegal immigration problem, he said. [Bloomberg]
Germany......
German Exports Decline Significantly and "Unexpectedly"
Given that all of Europe is in a major recession and it is nearly impossible for the German export machine to keep cranking in such circumstances, the only real surprise is how long it took for German exports to the rest of the eurozone to plunge.
Nonetheless most economists were surprised by the news Germany's Recovery in Question as Exports Decline Significantly. German exports declined in May at their fastest pace since 2009 because of the slowdown in key European and China markets, adding to worries that the country's recovery was losing momentum.* * * |
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