Eurozone Leaders Continue to Rangel

July 24, 2012 - PRLog -- Following on the from latest fudge from the Eurozone leaders the Finnish finance minister, Jutta Urpilainen said her country was not prepared to keep the Euro “at any cost”.

She went on to say that the Euro was of “use for Finland” and added “we are constructive and want to solve the crisis, but not on any terms”.

Finland remains one of the remaining AAA – rated countries.

In Cyprus the finance minister blamed Greece for being forced to appeal the Russia, Brussels and the IMF for financial assistance. Vassos Shirly said it was “not fair” that Cyprus lost 4.2bn Euro (24% of GDP) when Greece’s debts were written off by 50%.

When are the politicians actually going to do something about this problem?

GREECE FAILS TO COLLECT TAXES

The Greek Government has only been able to take 630m Euros from the total of 12.6bn in court ordered tax fines.

The unpaid fines amount to 6.2% of the countries gross domestic product according to Greek newspaper, Ekathimerini which cited data posted on the finance ministry’s website.

The unemployment rate in Greece is presently 22.6%. The reasons for the poor tax take were blamed on understaffing and a lack of modern systems. The court orders came about after taxpayers disputed the fines imposed.

There are over 180,000 such outstanding cases in the courts. The Government had pledged that 50% of these would have been dealt with by 30th June 2012 but only 2.1% have made it to court according to the report.

The new Greek PM Antonis Samaras said the country would not demand changes to the terms of its bailout but would renegotiate policies it feels are preventing it from hitting targets.

Based on these figures there is a long way to go!

Article written by TIm Corfield

http://www.griffinandking.co.uk