Giorgos Katrougalos

A Council of State decision gives certain bank employees the right to retire with a full pension without having reached the official retirement age (67), on the sole condition that they have fulfilled the necessary number of years of service.

Greek pensioners were on Wednesday staging a protest outside the Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, against planned pension reforms.

Judges have been examining whether all clauses concerning the pension cuts, introduced two years ago by former labor and social security minister Giorgos Katrougalos, adhere to the Constitution.

Greek pensioners shout slogans during a demonstration against planned pension reforms in Athens, Tuesday.

The key stumbling blocks holding up an agreement between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia regarding the latter's official name are over the use of the name and Greek demands for a revision of FYROM's constitution, Alternate Foreign Minister Giorgos Katrougalos told the Athens-Macedonia News Agency on Tuesday.

A plenary session of the Council of State, Greece's highest administrative court, has provisionally ruled (by a marginal majority) that the pension cuts scheduled for next year abide by the country's legislation and Constitution. The planned reductions from January 2019 will in some cases reach up to 18 percent.

As the momentum in talks between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece on the former's official name wanes, Greek Interior Minister Panos Skourletis on Monday underlined the need for Greece to seek a "broader parliamentary consensus" on the issue.

The issue of the first 16,000 pensions based on the provisions of the 2016 law introduced by then social security minister Giorgos Katrougalos confirms that all pensioners can expect an average reduction of between 16 and 25 percent, reaching up to 50 percent in some cases.

Greece's left-led government wants a "clean exit" from the international bailout so it can raise the minimum wage and restore collective labor agreements, alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgos Katrougalos told Skai radio on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Peloponnese in a special ceremony on Friday at the Russian Embassy in Athens, which was attended by Alternate Foreign Minister Giorgos Katrougalos.

Former deputy premier Evangelos Venizelos told a Greek-French forum in Athens titled "A New Hope for Greece" that the country is heading for a "long-lasting memorandum" after August, meaning a monitoring program without the benefits of cheap borrowing from the European Stability Mechanism.