Greek gloom as economy stalls amid latest bout of EU wrangling

Only diehard communists now take to the streets in a nation where the Brussels bailout programme is showing little signs of working

Eight years into Greece's ordeal to escape bankruptcy, thousands of Communist party sympathisers packed into Syntagma Square in Athens on Friday to protest at the latest concessions made by Alexis Tsipras's leftist government to keep the country afloat.

Massed before parliament in the fading light of day, they did what they had come to do: rail against the cuts that loom in return for further disbursement of the emergency aid now needed to avert economic collapse. The serial drama of Greece's debt repayments will reach a climax again when loans of a7.5bn mature in July.