Brussels, 27/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Bloomberg says that on Friday 27 March, the Greek government made the final changes to its long list of reforms, which Reuters said would be sent to the institutions (European Commission, ECB and IMF) on Friday evening. If the list is judged to be convincing, Eurogroup has promised to meet as soon as possible.
“The plan contains some basic reforms whose aim is to allow Greek society to have some breathing space within the framework of the kind of policies that we want to implement over the next 2.5 months, until June,” said a Greek government spokesman, Gabriel Sakellaridis on Vima FM on Thursday, quoted in Greek newspapers. He ruled out extending the retirement age to 67 and promised the package would not include new measures that would affect the income of people living in the country.
Some sources see the Greece public purse emptying in the month of April (some say by 8 April), but the country needs to repay €465 million to the IMF on 9 April. Reuters quotes sources saying that Greece can hold out until 20 April. According to Greek newspaper Kathimerini, there wasn't any agreement on Thursday evening between Greece and the institutions about the size of the budget surplus that Greece needs to make this year. Greece wants the 1.5% of GDP target to be cut by half.
Collaboration with Switzerland. On Thursday, Greece entered talks with Switzerland about sending back to Greece assets illegally lodged by Greek passport-holders in Switzerland. There aren't any reliable data about the exact scale of Greek inhabitants' assets in Swiss bank accounts, said Jacques de Watteville, Swiss secretary of state for international financial questions, speaking in Athens where he was meeting with Nikos Pappas, secretary of state in the Greek government. De Watteville said that the last figure from the Swiss National Bank went back to 2013 and was for a total of around €6.3 billion. “These figures, dating from 2013, do not say anything about a taxable percentage,” he explained.
De Watteville said the 'Lagarde list' had been stolen by former bank employee Herve Falciani and he couldn't work on a stolen item, but that didn't mean that the people on the list would be totally immune and if they turned up on other lists , then there were other tools for opening an investigation. The two countries have discussed the automatic exchange of bank information and an agreement to this end was earmarked in Brussels last week. The collection of information will begin in 2017 with the first exchange taking place in 2018 (see EUROPE 11278). According to a press release, Switzerland is prepared to cooperate with Greece to find a speedy, feasible solution so that information can be automatically exchanged, so that taxpayers can bring their affairs in order (tax evasion in the past). Tackling tax evasion is a flagship policy for the Tsipras government in Greece. (Elodie Lamer)