House to approve 28 austerity bills before December 13 Eurogroup
The House of Representatives is set to approve a total of 28 bills that implement provisions of the adjustment programme, agreed between the Cypriot authorities and the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, as part of Cyprus` application for financial assistance from the EU bailout mechanism.
Speaking after an extraordinary meeting of the House Committee of budgetary and financial affairs, its Chairman Nicolas Papadopoulos said the House is required to approve these bills by next Thursday December 12, one day before the meeting of the Euro area Finance Ministers (Eurogroup) meeting which will discuss the Cypriot application for financial assistance.
Christos Patsalides, the Finance Ministry`s Permanent Secretary who briefed the Committee on the bills submitted to the Parliament, said the approval of the austerity measures “is imperative between default and insolvency”.
Papadopoulos pointed out that these bills are only the beginning of the legislative work for the implementation of the Cypriot adjustment programme.
“This is not the end of the road, many more bills are on the way because this is only the beginning with regard to the implementation of our commitments stemming from the memorandum”, he said.
Referring to one of the bills providing for scaled salary cuts in the wider public sector, said to be unconstitutional, Papadopoulos said the Attorney General who participated in the meeting said these measures will be approved on the basis of the law of necessity.