Brussels, 01/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 1 December, the European Commission was still refusing to take a position on a potential date for the troika, of which it is a member alongside the ECB and the IMF, to return to Athens to try to conclude the final monitoring mission of the eurozone programme, ahead of the Eurogroup meeting of 8 December.
According to the Commission, which again stressed that the aim was to draw a line under the monitoring mission of the troika, the Eurogroup will discuss the Greek dossier. Over at the Eurogroup on Monday, nobody wished to elaborate on the substance of the discussions to be held between the eurozone ministers on Greece. On Friday, Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici stressed the importance of reconciling opinions “fully” so that “the necessary decisions can be taken as quickly as possible”.
Whether it comes down to the details of the ECCL preventative credit line to accompany the programme exit or an extension of the said programme, national procedures will be needed in either scenario. However, the national parliaments will be in winter session by mid-December. If the programme needs to be extended, this session could be fairly long, a Eurogroup source explained.
With the risk of early elections next March if it fails to rally the votes needed for the election of the President, the Greek government was talking about just a few weeks of extension, if necessary. In order to prevent this risk, the Greek authorities sent a series of proposals to the troika over the weekend. A source for the troika told us that it is too early to say whether the Greek proposals will be enough to get the institutional trio back to Athens.
In parallel, with the eurozone seeming largely disinclined to reduce the level of Greek debt further, the government of the Greek Central Bank and former finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, called over the weekend on Greece's partners to keep to this commitment, stating, contrary to the Eurogroup sources, that such a reduction of the burden would be necessary for several reasons: “firstly, because the sustainability of the current levels of public debt depend on a very high primary surplus (4.5% of GDP) from 2016 onwards. Secondly, because the lightening of the Greek debt load, according to the discussions at that Eurogroup, was also seen as a reward for Greece after a long and persistent fiscal adjustment”, Stournaras said in an interview with Kathimerini. (EL)