Acropolis to close in one-day strike over privatisation fears
The majority of Greece's 275 tourist attractions were shuttered Thursday, potentially losing about 100 million euros in revenue as over 3,000 members of the Vafiadis union, representing cultural ministry workers, participated in a one day strike over fears that more and more of the country's prized architectural sites were being placed on the list for privatization according to the terms of bailout lenders. A superfund was created in 2016 to manage and sell state assets for the next 99 years, as part of the bailout terms the country had to accept in order to remain in the EU. The finance minister denied that architectural and heritage sites would wind up on the list, but Greece is still well short of the funds it has said it would raise from privatization in order to pay its third and final bailout; the country has the highest debt load of any EU state and received 288 billion euros in rescue loans since 2010. The cultural minister has conceded that mistakes may have been made on the list and has asked the finance minister to release the list of properties that would be exempt from privatization in order to assuage fears.
See "Acropolis to close in one-day strike over privatisation fears", Helena Smith, The Guardian, October 11, 2018