Meeting in the governing council of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday 25 October officially approved the payment of the second sub-tranche of €2.8 billion in aid to Greece.
In a statement, the managing director of the ESM, Klaus Regling, paid tribute to the efforts made by Greece in "pension reform, bank governance, the energy sector and revenue collection". He also predicted that the country, which has been on financial life support since 2010, will return to strong levels of growth and will once again be in a position to borrow on the markets in the long term, if the Greek government continues the implementation of the reforms.
The envelope of €2.8 billion is made up of a sum of €1.1 billion unblocked by the Eurogroup for the achievement of 15 required prior actions (see EUROPE 11642) and €1.7 billion following an analysis concluding that the payment arrears of the Greek state had been reabsorbed.
This payment will allow the start of the second monitoring mission of the third Greek bailout plan, during which the Greek government must carry out a reform of the employment market. At the same time, discussions on Greek debt relief by means of short-term, low-level measures (not requiring the improvement of the national parliaments of the other Eurozone countries) will continue, in particular to try to convince the IMF to come on board the aid plan.
In the framework of the third Greek bailout plan, with an envelope of €86 billion from the permanent bailout fund of the Eurozone, the ESM will have paid €31.7 billion to the Greek state. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)