Brussels, 10/12/2013 (Agence Europe) - The troika of lenders (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) will make a lightening trip to Athens for a week on Wednesday to make progress on matters to be implemented by the end of the year and pave the way for the monitoring mission to return in January. Greece still has the chance of getting the next batch of aid, €1 billion, paid out in 2013 if it implements the last prior action on time.
The head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, says he is “carefully optimistic” about agreement on the final prior action (restructuring of parts of the defence industry) being reached by the end of the year, in which case the euro working group at the Council of Ministers would hold an impromptu meeting to endorse payment of the €1 billion of aid (€500 million of which is profits returned by central banks). Euro Commissioner Olli Rehn said that “we can close as many policy issues before the end of the year as possible”, in the December monitoring trip, yet Dijsselbloem said: “But, realistically, it's going to be very very hard, if not impossible, to finalise this review before this year's end, so the final work will have to be done on that in January.”
The Greeks will be taking over the presidency of the Council of the EU in January, while it continues negotiating with its lenders. The Eurogroup says that good progress has been made, but more work needs to be done. Dijsselbloem commented: “In order for Greece to return to a path of sustainable growth and job creation, further measures which were already in the agreed MoU, we're not talking about new measures, they were already in the agreed MoU, need to be implemented fully.” He said the political situation was difficult, and the difficult social and political situation made it difficult to push forward measures in the MoU, but he was “carefully optimistic that agreement can be found on milestones.” (EL/transl.fl)