At the Eurogroup meeting to be held in Tallinn (Estonia) on Friday 15 September, the economy and finance ministers of the Eurozone will discuss the third monitoring mission of the third Greek bailout plan and will hold an exchange of views on economic resilience within Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
The third Greek bailout plan is still top of the agenda of this latest Eurogroup meeting, three months after an agreement finalising the second monitoring mission of the third bailout plan (see EUROPE 11810), preceding the disbursement of €7.7 billion by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) on 10 July (see EUROPE 11826). There is another €800 million to be paid to Greece in this framework, but this will have to wait until the Greek government supplies data on the clearance of its debt arrears, which it has been asked to do by the end of October. If it does not, the money will not be forthcoming.
The Greek authorities, particularly Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (see EUROPE 11859), who are in the preparatory phases of the third monitoring mission, hope that this mission can be finalised before the end of the year to allow the Hellenic Republic to come out of this third bailout plan. Although the timetable will be tight, this target appears to be achievable, according to a European source.
The Greek finance minister, Euclide Tsakalotos, and his institutional partners of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), the ESM and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will present all of the Eurozone finance ministers with the progress made by Greece in implementing the economic adjustment measures. The debate will focus mainly on the 2018 budget, public sector reforms and the employment market.
The ministers are also expected to discuss the case of Andreas Georgiou, former Director of the Greek statistical institute (ELSTAT), who was sentenced on Tuesday 1 August to a two-year suspended prison sentence in the framework of the transmission of Greek budgetary data to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, in 2009 (see EUROPE 11841).
Economic resilience. The Eurogroup will also discuss the more abstract matter of economic resilience within the Economic and Monetary Union. In order to ride out any economic shocks, the countries that have adopted the single currency must show particular vigilance and have solid instruments at their disposal, or a crisis in one member state could have repercussions for the entire Eurozone. For this reason, the Eurozone finance ministers will carry out an exchange of views and consider areas in which actions and measures are necessary to tighten up the resilience of the EMU and steer future discussions on growth, employment or taxation. Discussions are expected to be reasonably consensual and no more than a basis for future work. Readers may recall that the concept of 'economic resilience' was mooted in the report of the 'five presidents', entitled “Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union”, which was published on 22 June 2015 (see EUROPE 11340). (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)