Brussels, 01/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 1 June, the European Commission announced that within the Brussels Group (Greek authorities, Commission, ECB and IMF) there was a “large consensus on what needs to be done” in Greece and the direction to be taken by the technical discussions, so that the final monitoring mission of the current programme can be concluded. These comments come the day after a vitriolic open letter was published by the Greek Prime Minister, Alex Tsipras, in the French daily newspaper Le Monde.
“The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance. It is due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people” and to the positions of the European and international institutions, which are prepared to show flexibility in order to respect the election outcome, Tsipras writes. He adds that he suspects a desire “of some not to admit their mistakes and instead, to reaffirm their choices by ignoring their failures”.
“What matters now is unity”, said spokesperson Mina Andreeva, on behalf of the European Commission. The institution declined to comment further, but added that more important than open letters were concrete proposals for reform. The Commission has previously said that there was no point in trying to divide the three institutions. They are “hand in hand” of the discussions underway, Andreeva stressed.
Intensive discussions were held over the weekend between members of the Brussels Group and contact continues, she explained.
The greatest stumbling blocks are still the reforms of the employment market and pensions. On the latter point, Tsipras wrote in Le Monde that the position of his government is “completely substantiated and reasonable”. He explains that currently, 44.5% of pensioners receive a pension below the fixed threshold of relative poverty.
Tsipras has spoken on the telephone to the French President, François Hollande, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The two leaders are to meet the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Monday evening. Although the Greek dossier did not feature on the official agenda, there is every possibility that it will come up for discussion.
Through the day on Monday, the Greek daily newspaper Naftemporiki spoke of the possibility of an imminent interim agreement. However, the Commission and the Eurogroup have frequently reiterated that a comprehensive deal is needed. If the month there is left (the bailout plan expires on 30 June) also needs to be used to agree on the follow-up arrangement, the Commission is currently ruling out a further extension of the current programme. “The realistic option is to use the next days to run faster”, Jean-Claude Juncker told the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. He also ruled out the possibility of moving forward without the IMF, which has been depicted on occasion as being the most intransigent party in the discussions. He reiterated the importance to Germany of the IMF's involvement and said that the bailout plans would not work fully without the IMF. The nature of IMF participation in the future will depend on the discussions underway, he explained.
On 31 May, the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, appointed the former Socialist MP Elena Panaritis as Greece's representative within the IMF, but she turned the job down on Monday due to a row which has arisen among the Syriza MPs. Previously, Panaritis was involved in negotiations with the creditors alongside the previous government. “Somebody who represents the politics of the memorandum cannot represent the current government, which has completely different principles and values”, a group of around 40 MPs complained in an open letter published on Sunday evening by the Greek press agency Ana (our translation). (Elodie Lamer)