Europe’s left dreads what living standards are becoming

PARIS (Reuters) – Europe’s left is torn between outrage and anxiety over drastic cuts in living standards and working conditions being imposed on Greeks by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Indignation at sweeping pay and pension reductions and public sector job cuts dictated by official creditors in return for a second bailout of the debt-ridden euro zone state is strongest in south European countries that fear a similar rod.

Yet there is scant sympathy from centre-left politicians and labor leaders in northern Europe, where voters are more worried at the potential cost of bailouts, nor in former communist central Europe, where people are more inured to hardship.

“What if we all became Greeks?” left-wing French daily Liberation asked on Monday. “Is what is being imposed today on this pressured and humiliated country a foretaste of what will one day be prescribed for Italy, Portugal, and why not France?”

A planned 22 percent cut in the Greek minimum wage, with a 32 percent cut for workers under age 25, is among the most radical steps backwards inflicted in peacetime in modern Europe. Only Latvia has endured a similar EU/IMF-mandated “internal devaluation” cutting living standards.

Public sector pay in Ireland has fallen on average by 15.9 percent since 2009 due to wage cuts and a pension levy, but a 12 percent cut in the minimum wage agreed with lenders was reversed after the government found savings elsewhere.

The leader of Portugal’s largest trade union, Armenio Carlos of the CGTP, praised Greek workers’ “heroic resistance” against austerity measures and warned that his own country could face a similar social explosion.

“If the results in Greece were disastrous, without a doubt they will be no different here,” Carlos said last week.

French Socialist politician Segolene Royal, the defeated presidential candidate in 2007, voiced outrage at the way austerity was targeting the poorest Greeks while the rich were still able to evade taxes with impunity.

Accusing European leaders of “cowardice,” she singled out European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso for criticism.

“Athens is burning … Where is Mr Barroso? – the ultra-liberal politician chosen to head the Commission – that was a very grave error. Where is the Council of Ministers? What is the European parliament doing?” Royal asked in a radio interview.