[JURIST] Greece’s parliament on Saturday voted to accept the economic reforms rejected by the government last week. According to Greek media reports [Naftemporiki live coverage, in Greek], the Saturday morning vote was led by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras [official website], who vocally supported voting against accepting the proposed bailout deal in last week’s referendum. The vote by a divided parliament [Reuters report] comes just one day before Europe said a deal must be finalized in order for Greece to remain a part of the eurozone. In a statement [text] made Wednesday following the submission of proposals by the Greek government to both the Eurogroup and the Summit of Eurozone Leaders, Tsipras called the state of the Greek economy just a Greek problem, but “a European one that we must all solve together responsibly.” Following Saturday’s vote, he stated that the priority now was to have a positive outcome in Sunday’s negotiations. The move to accept the measures was not universally welcomed, with 10 members on the parliament’s ruling bench abstaining or voting against the measures and another seven absent. The proposal included a mix of tax increases and spending cuts which some members of Tsipras’s Syriza party [official website, in Greek] said they could not support.

The debt crisis [BBC timeline] in Greece began in 2009 with a down-grade of a credit rating, and in the following years, has led Greece to borrow hundreds of billions of euros. Last week the country voted [JURIST report] not to accept the bailout deal offered by Europe. Earlier that week, as the country was preparing for the vote, protesters in Greece gathered [JURIST report] in the tens of thousands, holding rival rallies that drew attention to the split within the country as the referendum approached. In April nineteen eurozone creditors held a meeting [JURIST report] in Latvia to demand the completion of the economic reform program agreed to be Greece necessary to avoid a Grecian default or exit from the euro. Earlier that month the European Central Bank (ECB) expressed concerns [JURIST report] about Greece’s draft law that prohibits the government from foreclosing on primary residences where borrowers can prove total wealth requirements as ripe for unscrupulous debtors to engage in strategic defaults without repercussions. In March Greece’s parliament passed an anti-poverty bill [JURIST report] that would provide free electricity and food-stamps to low-income households.