Greek police clashed with striking truck drivers outside an oil refinery near the northern city of Thessaloniki today after unions defied a government order to go back to work.
The five-day strike has disrupted fuel supplies across Greece in the busy tourism summer season, leading to long queues at petrol stations, and also affected businesses.
Greece’s 33,000 hauliers stopped work on Monday to protest against government plans to slash the price of licences, a key liberalisation reform prescribed in a multi-billion euro EU/IMF bailout plan for the debt-laden country.
Under the terms of the bailout, Greece must open up the road freight industry to competition by September and liberalise other closed professions, such as lawyers and architects, by June 2011.
“We continue the strike," truckers' union leader George Tzortzatos told reporters. "We will not hold a funeral for our licences, we will fight with all our might to protect our property."
Hauliers risk criminal prosecution and losing their licences after the government invoked emergency powers on Wednesday, taking an unusually tough stance to order them to get back behind the wheel, citing public health risks from the lack of food, fuel and medicines delivered to retailers.
Officials said the government would press ahead with sanctions.
“Whoever refuses to go back to work will be arrested and deprived of his licence," a Transport Ministry spokeswoman said. "The Greek law will be fully applied."
The truckers' decision to continue their labour action came as a team of EU, IMF and ECB officials visited Athens to decide whether Greece has made enough progress in implementing the bailout plan to receive a second, 9-billion euro aid tranche.
Road freight is one of the most closed professions in Greece with no new licences issued for nearly 40 years. Those in circulation are sold from person to person for hundreds of thousands of euro.
Some economists say opening up the sector could lower business costs and boost GDP by 1 percentage point per year.
Fully opening up the country’s 70 or so closed professions would boost GDP by 10 percent in five years and by some 17 percent in the long-run, when including the impact on the labour market, according to a study by the Athens-based IOBE think-tank.
“We believe that opening professions will help young people, open up the possibility for better and cheaper services and pave the way for growth," Prime Minister George Papandreou told a cabinet meeting yesterday.
Reuters