Greece is
very beautiful as Julie described it. There is a lot to visit, for example
ancient monuments, but I actually don’t know anything about the politics of
this country.
The first
day, I bought a travel guide to look up some information about this country. It
seemed that Greece is a presidential parliamentary republic, belongs to the
NAVO and is a part of the EU. The Greek government is similar to the model that
you can find in many Western democracies. The president is elected by the parliament
for a 5-year term and other members of the parliament are elected for a 4-year
term.
Greece is divided
into 51 prefectures and each prefecture in led by a prefect who is elected by
popular vote. Greece has also 13 regional administrative districts.
We visited
the Parliament of Greece. A guide told us a lot about the politics in this
country. The President of Greece is Karolos Papoulias. He is president since 12
March 2005. Greece has also a Prime Minister. First it was Papandreou who was
Prime Minister, but he has long been criticized in Greece for his handling of
the country's financial crisis. He has resigned from his title and now Lucas
Papademos has been designated Prime Minister in pending the elections since 11
November 2011. It was necessary because Greece had to form a new government to
avoid bankruptcy and schedule new elections.
On February
21, the European ministers of Finance have reached an agreement about a bailout
of 130 billion euros. The Euro countries did agree that Greece will pay a lower
interest rate on the loans. Expressed in net present value, the banks don’t
have to pay 73-74 percent of their claim. Without this additional concession,
the government had to put more money on the table. There has been much more
decided but first we had to take a lunch pause. We went to a cozy restaurant
and chattered a bit about little things.
Have a nice
day!
Roselinde
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