Brussels, 17/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - No rapprochement of positions materialised on Tuesday 17 February between Greece and the eurozone, following the breakdown of talks at Eurogroup on Monday on the follow-up to the second Greek bailout, which expires at the end of the month (see EUROPE 11254).
In Athens, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, promised that the government would not take a single step back from what it promised during the election campaign and announced that voting would take place on Friday on a series of welfare measures for the country's population. One of the first of these measures will be rules to protect homes from repossession and for the poorest people to be allowed to pay back bank loans in one hundred monthly payments.
Tsipras said Greece says no to conditions and ultimatums, accusing German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble of losing his sang froid during the Eurogroup meeting.
The Europeans fear that Greece will take unilateral measures that are not part of the current structural adjustment programme and would jeopardise the country's fragile public purse. None of my colleagues has yet understood what Greece wants, said Schäuble, adding that it wasn't certain that even Greece knew what it wants.
The European Commission is active behind the scenes to find a solution acceptable to everyone, in other words that would allow Greece to apply social measures it was elected on and that would allow the eurozone to have guarantees about budget responsibility and the pursuit of reforms to make the country more competitive. The eurozone and the Commission say the only way to achieve this is to extend the current bailout in order to avoid going off track (with all the unknown consequences that would have for the whole eurozone) and to leave time over the next few months to negotiate a new contractual relationship between Greece and its lenders. To this end, the Greek authorities have been asked to formulate an official request by Friday for an extension to the current bailout programme.
On Tuesday, Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said there was no alternative to an agreement among all nineteen eurozone members, adding that there was “no plan B.”.
Contradictory information was circulating on Tuesday about the existence of draft statements drawn up by the Commission, the head of Eurogroup and Greece. Luxembourg's finance minister Pierre Gramegna said the Commission had not presented anything because it was a discussion without documents. He said that what the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, had told ministers was not what he had told the press conference afterwards. During the Eurogroup meeting, said Gramegna, he hadn't promised that no unilateral measures would be taken and also he hadn't mentioned a Commission document that he could have agreed to. (Mathieu Bion and Élodie Lamer)