Brussels, 18/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - The representatives of Greece's institutional creditors are back in Athens to resume negotiations on Tuesday 19 April with the Greek authorities on the scope of the measures Greece must apply in order to respect its budgetary objectives.
Following “constructive” discussions on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, the heads of mission of the 'institutions' (Commission, ECB, IMF and ESM) are returning to Athens today and tomorrow with the “aim to conclude as soon as possible” the first monitoring mission of the third Greek bailout plan,European Commission spokesperson Margaritis Schinas confirmed on Monday 18 April. Referring to “progress” in the negotiations, he said that the “momentum” observed should be maintained in order to finalise a package of reforms which is “coherent, economically efficient, socially fair and financially balanced”.
Doubt remains over the negotiators' chances of reaching an agreement a technical level that will be politically approved by the Eurogroup, in Amsterdam on Friday 22 April. In order to do this, it would be necessary by then to finalise - or even adopt - reforms of pensions and income tax as well as the treatment of non-performing bank loans. The Europeans, who firmly believe that an agreement is possible within a relatively short timeframe, stress the importance of complying with the primary budgetary surplus objective (before servicing of the debt) of 3.5% of GDP in 2018. “The budgetary targets fixed last summer for the period up to 2018 must be respected”, Schinas stressed. The IMF, the other hand, believes that this objective is unrealistic and would require substantial reliefof the Greek debt in order to take part in the third bailout plan.
On Friday 15 April, the Greek administration said that the State budget had recorded a primary budgetary surplus of €2.68 billion in the first quarter of 2016, whilst the target laid down over this period was close to €1.1 billion.
On Monday, there were several international media reports of the hypothesis of a package of savings measures in the order of €3 billion to be applied if the budgetary objective is not met. These measures, which will certainly be unpopular, would have to overcome the hurdle of the Greek Parliament, where the coalition in power, led by Syriza, has a very scant majority, of 153 seats out of 300. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)