Brussels, 12/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 12 April, Greece and its institutional creditors adjourned their negotiations in the framework of the first monitoring mission of the third Greek bailout plan.
These negotiations will resume in Athens on Monday of next week, following the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, on the sidelines of which the talks will continue. The aim sought by Athens is to conclude the first monitoring mission at the meeting of the Eurogroup to be held in Amsterdam on Friday 22 April.
The Greek government and the four institutions (European Commission, ECB, IMF and ESM) agreed that progress had been made, the Greek finance minister, Euclide Tsakalotos, said on Tuesday 12 April, Reuters reports. The day before, the Greek minister of state, Nikos Pappas, said that there was a convergence of opinions on income tax and measures to plug a budgetary gap of €2 billion, for instance through increasing social security contributions. The negotiations are said to be struggling more over the treatment of non-performing bank loans, particularly those related to mortgage loans for the purchase of principal residences.
The European Commission believes that it is possible for the differences of opinion between Athens and its creditors to be overcome. “We know that there are a few differences over the evaluations and the efforts to be made to achieve the budgetary objectives. These can be resolved”, the Commissioner for the Euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the European Parliament, in Strasbourg on Monday evening. He said that the independence of the tax collection administration, the creation of the privatisation fund and the deregulation of the energy market are part of the discussions. The Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, called for the involvement of the IMF in the third Greek bailout plan, despite the public spats between Athens and the international financial organisation (see EUROPE 11524). In the most recent of these, the Director General of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, said that Greece could not “just continuously tag along and expect things will be sorted out”, calling on the radical left-wing government to take greater ownership of the third bailout plan, in an interview published by Bloomberg on Monday. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)