Greeks mark May Day with anti-austerity protests

Greece's prime minister joined a May Day demonstration of defiance against the country's international creditors on Friday as talks to end the impasse over bailout money continued.

Alex Tsipras mingled with protesters in central Athens who held up banners and placards denouncing the memorandum, as the €240bn bailout agreement is known.

Outside the parliament building demonstrators shouted anti-austerity slogans and told the bailout monitors from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank to "stay away from our country".

Ferry sailings to the Aegean islands were cancelled because of a 24-hour strike by seamen, who accused the monitors of "destroying the workers' rights to social protection and union activism" by demanding further pension cuts and labour market reforms.

Panayotis Lafazanis, minister for productive recovery and a critic of the international lenders, told a cheering crowd in Klathmonos square near parliament: "The message [of May Day] this year is of struggle and resistance.

"Greece is taking a tough line in the talks . . . the government will keep its promises . . . and the negotiation will have a successful outcome," said Mr Lafazanis, leader of Syriza's Left Platform faction, which opposes concessions to the country's creditors.

Mr Tsipras told a cabinet meeting on Thursday evening he was optimistic a deal would be reached over the weekend that would allow Greece to unlock funding from a €7.2bn bailout package frozen since last year.

Athens scraped together enough funds this week to meet pension obligations for April and will be able to make a €200m interest payment to the IMF due on May 6, say people familiar with the government's cash position.

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Yet the premier insisted the new Greek negotiating team under Euclid Tsakalotos, deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, would stick to the government's so-called "red lines" ruling out further pension cuts and labour reforms, increases in value added tax and additional privatisations.

People in Athens briefed on the talks played down the prospects for an early agreement saying the atmosphere had improved but progress was uneven. A new Greek list of fiscal and structural reforms had been rejected because it was considered to be lacking in substance.

"Some progress is happening but they're still pretty much at the beginning of the process," one official added.

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