Greece has reached a milestone on its road to recovery after languishing in dire fiscal straits since 2009, verily the worst economic blight that any country has suffered in contemporary history. Chiefly, it has concluded a critical compliance review that will allow the beleaguered government in Athens to avert default in July. Of course, this will entail another bout of austerity in the form of pension cuts that will be matched in parallel with an increase in taxes.

In a remarkable give-and-take ~ that has hitherto been in short supply ~ international creditors have agreed to disburse Euro 7.5 billion in emergency loans to enable the country to honour maturing debt repayments. Furthermore, the lenders have agreed to hold talks on managing the ballooning debts.

This is particularly vital if Greece has to gain access to capital markets, from which segment it has been cut off for the past eight years. In a word, Tuesday’s development represents a remarkable degree of forward movement towards bailout talks, prompting Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos to announce that “white smoke” had been spotted. “There is white smoke. The negotiation is finished with agreement on all issues,” was the passionate message conveyed by the British-trained Marxist economist. Profoundly significant must be the allusion to the “white smoke” which emanates from the chimney of the Vatican, signifying the election of the Pope.

Greece has for now been rescued, if one were to draw a distinction with a “bailout”. Markedly, the cementing of friction with the rest of Europe, preeminently the big powers, has happened at a crucial juncture, specifically when the solidarity of the European Union is on test with the imminent Brexit negotiations. In the wake of a nationalist wave in Theresa May’s Britain and, to a lesser degree, in France, the essay towards recovery in Greece has been initiated by the Left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

He is scheduled to approve the new cuts in Parliament by mid-May to enable the Eurozone finance ministers to “unfreeze” bailout funds at a scheduled meeting on 22 May. The deal ends more than six months of intense wrangling over the fiscal and structural reforms that Athens must implement in exchange for loans from its third, Euro 86 billion bailout programme. That blueprint was outlined in 2015 when Greece came closest to crashing out of the Eurozone and reverting to the Drachma.

The conditions attached to the lifeline remained open to negotiations, however. Discord most recently had focused on labour reforms and pensions. With the Leftist government agreeing to slash pension by 19 per cent, fears of a renewed movement are not wholly unfounded. With an overdose of austerity, the people will have to bear the burden for some time yet. This is the paradox of leftism in Greece.