"Sue Venizelos now!" by Kostas Vaxevanis

By Kostas Vaxevanis

Re-posted and translated from Pandora’s Box by @IrateGreek

Is there a prosecutor to do the obvious? Yes, I know, this sentence has been written and said thousands of times before, but I don’t know what else I can write anymore. The Parliamentary Committee investigating the issue of the Lagarde list [1] has now officially received from the French authorities documents describing how the list arrived in Greece. This fully confirms HotDoc’s findings: we wrote that the list arrived through official channels from France, together with official handover and delivery notes, in order for it to be used by the tax department. Everything we uncovered as journalists with information provided the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Greek Embassy in Paris has now been forwarded, officially, to Parliament.

Greece: a new, tougher law against racism?

Greek media hailed on 07 May 2013 a proposed new bill against racism that was reportedly prepared by the Ministry of Justice and will be submitted to parliament after the Easter holiday. According to news reports (see e.g. here, here, here and here), the new bill proposes much harsher penalties for all forms of hate speech, with prison sentences ranging from 3 to 6 years and fines up to €20,000, while deprivation of political rights would be considered in certain cases. Discussion of this bill began in the public debate as it was announced that parliament would discuss lifting the immunity of Golden Dawn MP Germenis following his assault on Mayor of Athens Kaminis last week during a food distribution “for Greeks only” organized by Golden Dawn.

Ruling by decree

On Monday 14 January, the Greek parliament ratified with 166 ayes, 123 nays and 1 abstention six of the acts of legislative content pushed through by the government since November 2012 as well as additional amendments to Greek laws, using the emergency voting procedure. Acts of legislative content are essentially decrees issued by government ministers which come in force immediately after being approved by the President of the Republic and must be ratified by parliament within some three and a half months in order to become permanent law. The procedure of acts of legislative content is intended, according to the constitution, to be used in cases of extreme emergency, but the current government has been issuing such acts to bypass parliament, for example to pass amendments to the latest bailout agreement merely days after it was voted on 7 November 2012.

What happened in the morning of #7ngr in the Greek Parliament

(By @doleross, translated from Greek)

When discussions over the draft law on the new austerity measures (Memorandum III) started in the Greek Parliament this morning, Syriza and Independent Greeks questioned the compatibility of thedraft law with the Constitution. According to the rapporteurs of the two parties, paragraphs on salary and pension cuts were unconstitutional, and so was the way the draft law came to discussion in Parliament: that is the emergency procedure which limits discussion time to 10 hours, even though many members of the Parliament only received the final, very long text of the law, on the same morning.

Discussion of the bailout in Parliament on 11 February 2012

By @IrateGreek

The second bailout agreement between Greece and its international lenders was discussed in the Financial Affairs Committee of parliament on 11 February, one day before it was voted upon in the plenary session of parliament. Below is the intervention of E.Panaritis, MP for the governing party PASOK, during the discussion. Mrs Panaritis voted in favour of all provisions of the bill.

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