The European Union’s Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission seem to be hell-bent on forcing Greece’s new ruling government to agree to even more pension cuts (they’ve already been cut by about 30-50 percent in the past five years) and raising value-added taxes in order to get more cash to pay the current pensions and some of its debt obligations.

These pensions are not particularly generous now; they’ve already been trimmed by at least 15% and up to 44%.

Greek pensions are now, on the whole, far from exorbitant: social security ministry figures show the average main pension is €713 a month, and the average top-up pension – typically funded by an industry retirement scheme – €169 per month. Some 60% of pensioners get less than €800 gross a month, and 45% live on less than the monthly poverty limit of €665.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that since the current Greek government won election by saying there would be no more austerity programs instituted and that the Greeks have suffered enough (unemployment jumped to 28% in the five years that Europe has been demanding these programs), trying to force it to accept more would mean it would be forced out of office. Europe seems to think it can just push and push and push and eventually the poorer EU members will have to acquiesce to its “take your cod-liver oil” approach. The anger at Europe is already high; I suspect it would be so high if that happened that Greece’s ultra-right-wing Golden Dawn party might win enough seats to form a government. Considering that Golden Dawn is at least fascist if not neo-Nazi, that doesn’t seem to be a result the rest of Europe should want.