The statement from European Trade Union Confederation comes on the fifth evaluation of Portugal's rescue plan by the representatives of the Troika (European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank), pictured above with Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho at their last meeting.
"The austerity measures imposed by the Troika since 2011 in exchange for a three-year loan of 78 billion euro are both ineffective and counter-productive. With an unemployment rate of 16% and a 3% recession, the country is sinking deeper into the spiral of crisis and the outlook for 2013 is anything but positive", says the ETUC.
"The situation in Portugal brings clearly to light the limits and ineffectiveness of austerity and repeated budget cuts. We ask the Troika to draw the necessary conclusions and to make a radical change of approach", said ETUC General Secretary Bernadette Ségol.
"To achieve a lasting solution to the crisis, we need to definitively drop the austerity measures that have impoverished millions of citizens in Europe and stifled all opportunities for recovery. The payment deadlines imposed on Portugal are socially unacceptable. It is time for austerity to give way once and for all to measures that encourage sustainable growth, quality jobs and decent salaries, like those proposed in the ETUC's Social Compact for Europe", added Bernadette Ségol."
Portugaldailyview reports that Socialist MP Pedro Marques, speaking after a one-hour meeting with the troika representatives yesterday, said : "If we want more domestic demand and slow the recession, Portugal needs to interrupt this vicious circle of austerity that is overburdening the people and sinking the economy".
