European Parliament

Greece's SYRIZA-led government has won a confidence vote in Parliament, ahead of high-stakes talks in Brussels with bailout creditors.

Lawmakers voted 162-137 for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' government, elected on January 25 on a platform pledging to radically overhaul austerity in the financially struggling country.

Greece’s Parliament provided a widely expected vote of confidence to the leftist-dominated SYRIZA coalition government early Wednesday morning, hours before a crucial Eurogroup meeting is expected to signal whether eurozone lenders will grant the recession-plagued country a credit line — until the summer — without austerity-mandated strings attached.

Not long before the “vote of confidence” process began in Parliament, former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras addressed SYRIZA, charging that “We won’t let you lead us into a head-on collision”.

He continued by stressing that “Whoever loves one’s country wishes the new government to succeed, but we love Greece and we won’t compromise our European future”.

By Pantelis Boukalas

The war against oligarchies was officially declared during Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras first official speech on Sunday. He was full of fiery rhetoric and defiance but it still remains to be seen if the new Greek government will be able to dismantle the old media networks.

Senior members of Greece?s far-right Golden Dawn party will stand trial on April 20 after spending almost 18 months in detention waiting for their case to be heard, court officials said on Monday.

In his speech on Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that Greece had a "moral obligation" to claim reparations from Germany for the damages wrought by the Nazis during Worle War Two. He said that this was "a moral obligation to our people, to history, to all European people who fought and spilled their blood against Nazism."

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The Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) cabinet focused on negotiations that Greece will have with its EU partners concerning the economic crisis and programmed talks to begin in Parliament on Sunday.