The outgoing chair of the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG), Thomas Wieser, said on Sunday 14 January that conditional measures to relieve Greek debt in the medium term could be decided upon in order to end the third financial assistance programme.
“If there should be further debt relief after the end of the programme then it's only logical there will be some kind of additional agreements”, he told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in an interview held in the runup to the forthcoming Eurogroup meeting of 22 January which is expected to be decisive in concluding the third monitoring mission of the third bailout plan (see EUROPE 11937). However, there are questions still outstanding, such as possible medium-term debt relief measures, a preventative credit line under the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the conditions to be attached to these.
General elections will take place in Greece next year and the government of Alexis Tsipras is unlikely to rush to adopt further macro-economic measures when it has already been decreed that the Greek authorities will have to maintain a primary budgetary surplus of an average of 2% of GDP between 2023 and 2060 (see EUROPE 11810).
Wieser's term in office at the head of the EWG will officially end at the end of the month. Hans Vijlbrief will take over from him. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)