Luxembourg, 21/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - It is important to stabilise the immediate political situation in Greece, warned Euro Commissioner Olli Rehn on Friday 21 June, as the Greek Centre-Right party, Dimar, announced it has decided to leave the coalition government.
Dimar's decision was announced when the tripartite government formed with New Democracy, Pasok and Dimar failed to reach agreement on the re-opening of state broadcaster ERT. Dimar's withdrawal removes its 14 parliamentarians from the parliamentary majority, leaving the government with a slender majority of 3 seats at the moment. The Dimar parliamentarians may decide to vote with the Greek government anyway in the future to avoid a descent into chaos.
On Thursday evening, the eurozone said it was important for Greeks to introduce the reforms as a united front. Rehn said: “The political stability enjoyed for the past year has enabled the programme to be brought back on track” and he hoped “for the sake of the Greek people” and for the eurozone as a whole that stability would be preserved.
Greece is asked to pull out the stops so that the troika (European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank) can conclude its current fact-finding mission early next month, to enable the eurozone to decide whether to disburse the next instalment of aid, which will require the approval of some national parliaments before the summer break.
The president of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said that, if the troika gives a positive assessment in July, then there would be “no financial gaps and the programme would be fully financed for another year”. Similar official noises were made by the IMF. The Financial Times, however, reports that the IMF has threatened to withdraw from the programme. On Thursday evening, Pierre Moscovici said there wasn't talk of any break in relations with the IMF. He denied the rumour that various eurozone central banks are reluctant to activate the November 2012 agreements to roll over their debt (replacing some of the bonds they hold with new paper as the debt matures). A eurozone source said various banks were, however, unhappy about this. Reuters says that some central banks see this as amounting to direct financing of Greek state, which is not allowed under ECB rules. What is at stake is the possibility of Athens not being required to reimburse €5.6 billion of debt (€3.7 billion maturing in 2013 and 2014 and €1.9 billion in 2015 and 2016). (EL/transl.fl)