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    01 May 2012| last updated at 08:21PM

    Anti-austerity anger sweeps Europe on May Day



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    MADRID: May Day protesters poured into streets across Europe today, swept up in a wave of anti-austerity anger that threatens to topple leaders in Paris and Athens.

     

    From the eye of the eurozone debt storm in Madrid to the streets of Paris  and Athens, where tottering governments face elections within days, marchers  spoke of job losses, spending cuts and hard times.
       
    More than two years after the eurozone sovereign debt crisis erupted,  frustration with austerity is boiling over across the continent as voters wait  in vain for signs of the economic pay-off.
     
    In Spain, suffering the industrialised world’s highest jobless rate of 24.4  percent in the first quarter of 2012, the major unions called protests in about  80 cities.
     
    Tens of thousands massed in central Madrid’s Neptuno square, decrying the  jobless queue, new labour reforms that make it easier and cheaper to fire  workers, and a budget squeeze in health care and education.
     
    “Total Violence, You Are Robbing Us of Home and Bread!” read a banner  brandished by 51-year-old Josefa Martinez Fernandez, who said her two daughters  in their 20s were out of work.
     
    “They are going to destroy more jobs with the labour reform and create  rubbish jobs,” complained 28-year-old graphic designer Sonia Calles.
     
    “Already in Spain almost everyone is an intern up to the age of 30. And now  employment insecurity is going to hit those in their 30s and 40s.”    Thousands rallied in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities around Greece,  five days ahead of cliffhanger general elections with voters fed up with years  of austerity.
     
    “No-one Alone, Together We Will Get There!” read a banner draped on a stage  in Athens’ central Kotzia square.
     
    Polls indicate that Greeks are fleeing the main parties for smaller groups  in revenge over a European Union-IMF economic recovery plan that has brought  repeated waves of pay and pension cuts.
     
    The two parties that have ruled Greece for the past 37 years, socialist  Pasok and conservative New Democracy, are blamed for catastrophic finances  after decades of state overspending and nepotism.
     
    The new Greek government will face an early test when 436 million euros  ($575 million) of debt, held by private creditors who turned down a swap,  matures on May 15.
     
    In Paris, the French presidential election race overcast the day as three  powerful political movements battled for attention with competing rallies five  days before polling day.
     
    Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant far-right National Front kicked off the May  Day events with several thousand supporters marching through central Paris in  memory of Joan of Arc, who has become a far-right icon.
     
    Le Pen, who scored a record 18 percent in the April 22 first round, led the  march and urged supporters to abstain rather than back President Nicolas  Sarkozy or Socialist Francois Hollande in the run-off.
     
    Waving a sea of blue, white and red French flags, Le Pen’s supporters  chanted “France for the French!” and “This Is Our Home!” as they marched to the  Place de l’Opera.
     
    Sarkozy’s right-wing supporters were to gather at the Place du Trocadero in  Paris’s posh 16th arrondissement to hear their champion give his last major  speech in the capital before the vote.
     
    And, on the left, trade unions were to carry out their traditional march to  the historic Place de la Bastille.
     
    With the latest poll predicting a Hollande win on Sunday by 53 to 47  percent, Sarkozy is anxious to gain some momentum from the rally and said he  expected “tens of thousands of French” to take part.
     
    In contrast to Western European rallies, more than 100,000 people held a  Soviet-style march through Moscow to celebrate labour day and show support for  president-elect Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration.
     
    Accompanied by kitsch brass music and surrounded by multi-coloured  balloons, Putin and outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev led the march through a  central Moscow avenue.
     
    Police said around 120,000 people took part in the “Holiday of Labour and  Spring” march in Moscow. --  AFP
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