by JESSICA DESVARIEUX
On Sunday, Portugal’s president said he would not be calling for early elections. That means that he will be sticking to the E.U.-IMF $100 billion bailout. This translates into lowering the country’s borrowing rate, and it provides relief for international creditors. But what will this mean for ordinary people?
Here to get into the details is Wouter De Broeck. Wouter is a freelance journalist who has been living in Portugal since 2009. Currently his work focuses on problems of ordinary people in Portugal and Spain as a consequence of the economic crisis.
Thanks for joining us, Wouter.
So, Wouter, my first question is: can you just provide us some background? Just get us up to speed. What has been happening in Portugal over the past three years?
WOUTER DE BROECK, JOURNALIST: Basically the crisis didn’t start at exactly–in May 2011 when the bailout was [incompr.] People already were suffering from–there were low wages.
So since then, yeah, there has been a huge wage cuts, and also cuts on pensions, social benefits. So, yeah, people actually started to feel those cuts about, let’s say, early 2012. And the economy itself has been severely affected that Portugal is in a recession since three years. We are in the third year now. And the outlook for 2014 is also very poor. So, yes, the effects on the real economy has been huge so far.
DESVARIEUX: Okay. And it’s not just the economy. You can see the effects of it. And even in a 2011 study by the European Commission, they found that the austerity policies were, quote, clearly regressive, meaning low-income people lost a disproportionate amount of their wealth. Can you just talk about some of the stories that you hear on the ground? How is this affecting people on a day-to-day basis?
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