Greek unions staged fresh protests yesterday as parliament took up emergency legislation to implement a massive eurozone bailout and Fitch ratings warned the country was close to default.

Athens, bolstered by a hard-won 237-billion-euros rescue package on Tuesday, suffered a fresh setback when international ratings agency Fitch said a Greek debt default was “highly likely in the near term” despite the latest aid.

The warning came as Fitch cut Greece’s sovereign debt rating by two notches, from “CCC” to “C”, leaving it just one grade above formal default.

Greece, mired in recession for five years and with unemployment above 20 percent and rising, also had to revise up its public deficit targets before the ink on the eurozone rescue deal has even dried.

In a draft law on additional austerity measures to secure the massive public- and private-sector bailout, the government raised its 2012 deficit forecast to 6.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product from 5.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, around 5,700 demonstrators marched in the rain after calls by leftist unions and a communist group for protests against the bailout deal, police said.

Thirty people were detained for questioning and two were arrested.

Around 2,000 people demonstrated in Greece’s second city Thessaloniki, police said. The two main unions, GSEE and Adedy, had called the protests over new salary and pension cuts.