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“With this programme we are creating fiscal space to lower taxes and selectively increase social spending,” a top-level finance ministry source told To Vima.

On the one hand the government exhausts broad swathes of Greek society, the former middle class, so that on the other hand it can maintain a clientelistic network, handing out paltry benefits to those who have reached an economic impasse.

Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis informed the parliamentary conference of presidents that the omnibus bill will be tabled on 8 June, and will be debated by the competent parliamentary committees on 11 and 12 June.

'Turkey knows very well that we are not one of those countries with which one can play around. Unfortunately, a segment of Turkish politicians cannot understand the relationship between politics and the rule of law,' Kotzias replied.

At the end of 2017, there were 13.5mn debit cards in circulation, and 1.1 million new cards were issued last year. There was an increase in the number of credit cards by 200,000 in 2017.

In late 1996 and early 1997, under the weight of the Imia crisis, the then Simitis government was being extremely pressured to adopt an armaments programme that was over-sized as regards the country’s financial capabilities.

Tsipras said that the activity of Greek shipping companies contribute significantly to Greece’s GDP, as in 2017, foreign currency inflows from shipping exceeded 9bn euros, a 20 percent increase as compared to 2016.

The basis of the negotiation is the national line that has been forged a number of years ago by political forces, and it provides for a composite name with a geographic marker, for all uses, domestically and internationally – erga omnes.

The history of Greek shipping cannot be measured in years, or in decades, or even in centuries. It is measured truly in millennia. It would not, therefore, be possible in the framework of this special, historical edition, to go back to its beginnings. Hence, we focused on the 20th century, which was one of the most critical, decisive, and interesting in this entire journey.

Most are multi-millionaires, yet they are people of ceaseless hard work, with a palpable love of country, who came in numbers to this venerable meeting hall of the Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus.

As it turns out, 1997 did not begin in the most propitious manner for the government of Mr. Simitis. One had a shipwreck with dead people, flooding with dead people, and missiles in Cyprus that triggered Turkish threats of war, which would bring who knows how many dead, regardless of the outcome.

The post-war reconstruction of the Greek shipping industry had one thing in common with efforts to transit from sail to steam some 70 years earlier. It had to start all over again, from scratch.

Following the end of WWII, over a period of eight years, 24 successive cabinets failed to adopt measures for the revival of the Greek registry and its development into a productive entity that would benefit the Greek economy. This perspective was highlighted by the government of Alexandros Papagos, whose victory in November 1952 elections set the country’s political scene on a new course.

Piraeus, 15.5.2018

(Published on A Centennial Voyage: The History of the Union of Greek Shipowners, 1916-2016 by maritime historian and founder of the Greek Shipping Miracle (www.greekshippingmiracle.org) online maritime museum, George M. Foustanos)

No one who has not travelled professionally at sea can imagine what a tough occupation being a sailor is in peacetime.

The Greek government has repeatedly stressed that there will either be a comprehensive agreement resolving all aspects of the dispute or there will be no agreement.

At a meeting yesterday with Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, Ivanov said that the results so far of the negotiating process are in the framework of a “personal agreement” between Alexis Tsipras and FYROM PM Zoran Zaev

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in an address to the Greek Tourism Federation, extolled the crucial role of Greek tourism throughout the eight year crisis in bolstering the economy, and at the same time predicted that 2018 will be the best year ever for Greek tourism.

On the one hand there are the markets, with their well-known globalised sensitivity to the slightest upheaval, and on the other the advance of populism , euroscepticism, and the emergence of a new form of nationalism