Wolfgang Schaeuble - Photo EU Council
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GODOLLO) - EU finance ministers defended Saturday the imposition of painful austerity measures and called for public "understanding," as thousands of protesters were to gather in Budapest.
"People must understand that we are not making savings to make people angry, we are making savings in order to be able to pay in future for our social policies," Luxembourg's Luc Frieden said as ministers held a second day of talks dominated by a deal to bail out Portugal.
Unions were predicting some 30,000 protesters staging anti-austerity demonstrations around the ministers' meetings would descend on central Budapest Saturday.