EU BOSSES have pulled off a “coup” against Greece, campaigners and MPs warned yesterday after Athens capitulated to privatisation and austerity demands.

The new “bailout” deal forced on the country is more severe even than the terms Greeks overwhelmingly rejected in July 5’s referendum. Greece’s parliament has been given until the end of tomorrow to pass legislation enshrining the crippling “agreement” in law.

“The oldest democracy in the world has been subjected to a coup,” Green MP Caroline Lucas charged. “Over the course of just a few days the Greek parliament is being forced to rush through emergency legislation to cut pensions, raise taxes and privatise swathes of the economy.

“The forces of darkness — the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the eurozone and the European Central Bank (ECB) — are subjecting an already deeply impoverished country to further needless cruelty.

“These are dark days for anyone who believes in democracy. The will of a nation has been superseded in favour of relentless, economically destructive austerity.”

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces a potential rebellion by MPs after agreeing to the demands, which include privatising the electricity grid and ferry services as well as handing €50 billion (£35bn) in public assets to a holding company which will either sell them or seek to generate profit from them to repay creditors.

Representatives of the “troika” of the European Union, ECB and IMF will return to Athens with full access to ministers and veto power over legislation, a proposal Mr Tsipras had long rejected. But the Greek premier’s desperation not to leave the EU left him with no get-out clause.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s determination to punish the country for rejecting austerity was blamed for the exceptionally harsh conditions — which Mr Tsipras admitted would do further harm to an economy which has already shrunk by 25 per cent thanks to EU-mandated austerity.

Fellow Syriza minister Giorgos Katrougalos told BBC Radio 4 that the talks were “never about Greece, but whether we will have democracy in Europe.

“The Europe of austerity has won, but not without showing the world the essence of the problem. This was a forced agreement, forced under the threat of the murder — the political murder — of our economy.”

German newspaper Der Spiegel seemed taken aback by the “catalogue of horrors” being imposed on Greece while Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was reported to be concerned by Ms Merkel’s “humiliation” of the country.

Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins told the Star that Greece had been “bludgeoned” into agreeing to terms which would force its people to “struggle with poverty and unemployment for the foreseeable future.

“The EU is now showing its true colours as an authoritarian right-wing regime,” he said. “Today’s news will not be the end of the story.”