Brussels, 02/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - Statements came in one after the other on Thursday 2 July, from various political figures of the eurozone, some of them sounding a warning, some of them leaving a bit of room open in the event of a positive outcome of the referendum, with regard to the proposed reforms on which the Greek people will have their say, this Sunday 5 July.
'Yes' to reforms as a precondition for any openness. Addressing his national parliament on Thursday morning, the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, warned that a 'no' vote in the referendum would not strengthen the Greek negotiating position but would, quite the reverse, put the parties in an extremely difficult position. The French President, François Hollande, said that in the event of a positive outcome in the referendum, an agreement on the third package of financial aid could be concluded very quickly. The French Secretary of State for the Budget, Christian Eckert, said the day before that a rescheduling of the Greek debt was not a red line for France. This is an important issue to the Greeks, who wanted an agreement on this point at the same time as the rest, whilst the eurozone preferred to move forward in stages.
The IMF, which was the most disposed for this discussion to take place, said on Thursday, through its director general, Christine Lagarde, that it would be “preferable to see a deliberate move towards reforms” in Greece before debt relief was offered. According to the Financial Times, the IMF has calculated that if the growth forecasts were lower than anticipated and Greece only achieved a primary budgetary surplus of 2.5% in 2018 (rather than 3.5%), all of the loans under the first bailout plan (€53.1 billion) would have to be written off. If the €16.3 billion in eurozone funds were available to Greece until October (which is no longer the case), the IMF puts Greece's financial needs at €51.9 billion from October 2015 to December 2018.
The eurozone will probably be forced to get as far as that point, as even if the Commission's most optimistic scenario took shape, in which all reforms are implemented, Greece would not achieve the debt/GDP ratio targets in 2020 and 2022.
The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, tweeted that as the taxpayers had made “321 billion euros available to help Greece”, they were entitled to “demand reforms”.
“Now it's time for the Greek people to choose their future”, was as much as the European Commission was prepared to say, speaking through its spokesperson, Margaritis Schinas. According to a number of media sources, at a meeting behind closed doors with the EPP group of the EP, the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, put at €60 million the distance between the parties and an agreement, last Friday when the Greek negotiators left the negotiating table. “It's not about money and budgetary objectives, but about reforms and the capacity to carry out these reforms”, Schinas explained.
Greek finance minister confident that the 'noes' will have it. The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday that he was confident the Greeks would vote against the package of reforms proposed by the institutions, as they had already had enough. If the 'yes' vote wins, “maybe we will change the configurations of the government (…). We will do what we must do in order to respect the yes voting”, he said. He went on to say that he would personally refuse to sign an agreement which did nothing but “extend (the programme) and pretend”. In so doing, he opened the door to the possibility that he might no longer be finance minister on Monday, if the yes vote prevails. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the banking system should return to normal “as soon as we have a clear result”, said Nikos Pappas, the right-hand man of the Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras.
On Wednesday evening, the ECB decided to maintain the status quo on the question of its emergency liquidity to the Greek banks. A number of observers had concerns that it would decide on Monday to cut off this funding if the 'no' vote was victorious and the prospect of an agreement with the European Union on a third programme disappeared altogether.
Tsipras' predecessor, Antonis Samaras, now in the opposition at the helm of the centre-right party New Democracy, said that the current Prime Minister seemed to be doing everything in his power to drag Greece out of the eurozone. “I am confident: on Monday, we will all be Europeans”, declared Samaras. “A return to the drachma would be the worst, it would kill our economy”, he added. However, he declined to comment on a potential government reshuffle to avoid disorientating the discussion.
However, Yanis Varoufakis believes that a return to the drachma would be impossible, quite simply because all of the presses have been destroyed. He warned his partners against making any attempt to put Greece out of the eurozone, referring amongst other things to action before the Court of Justice of the EU.
“Greece leaving the eurozone is neither desirable nor anticipated”, the French finance minister, Michel Sapin, told the French television channel iTélé on Thursday morning.
For his part, Dijsselbloem said that in the event of a no vote in the referendum, not only would there be no basis for any further financial bailout plan, but “nor would there be a basis for Greece in the eurozone”.
This Friday, the Greek Council of State is to decide whether the referendum is constitutional. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, said in an interview with the Associated Press that the referendum had been arranged in such a short space of time that that was in itself a major problem. (Élodie Lamer)