Brussels .- After two failures, Athens and the eurozone, led by Germany, Friday preparing a new face to face to try to reach an agreement on the financing of Greece and avoid new period of uncertainty for Europe.
Without an agreement, Greece is in danger of being quickly without funds and doomed to exit the eurozone. A prospect that worries especially the United States, where a senior Treasury official warned against possible “boom uncertainty” before this decisive Eurogroup, from 15h00 (14h00 GMT) on Friday, AFP reported.
This meeting of finance ministers from the eurozone, the third in less than ten days, must lead to an agreement on extending the program for Greece, which expires on 28 February.
Greece wants to turn the page of austerity. But Germany, with the inflexibility that embodies his finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble conservative demands that Athens continue cleaning up its public finances and structural reforms demanded in exchange for two schemes to support amounting to 240,000 million euros.
Berlin is not alone, has the backing of Finland and the Baltic countries to the north, south Spain and Portugal.
The Portuguese Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque, made clear this Friday in the German press that there is “a framework” in the eurozone and that partners of Athens “are not willing to negotiate under other conditions.”
The Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on his side to Financial Times it would be “impossible” for him “to explain to people (in your country) to be given money for salaries and pensions in Greece”.
But really “locks” is Germany He trusted on Thursday a European source. “It is true that there is a people problem” between the austere Wolfgang Schäuble and his Greek counterpart, the brilliant Yanis Varoufakis. The press review for days tensions between the two men.
Athens on Thursday gave an important step towards compromise and decided to request an “extension” of the agreement for financial assistance to eurozone conminaba you accept this week.
“Trojan Horse”
In a letter to the Eurogroup, the Greek Government also said he was willing to accept the “supervision” of its creditors (EU, ECB and IMF) and pledged to refrain from “any unilateral action” that undermines its budgetary targets.
In return, claiming some “flexibility” to allow rectify most painful austerity measures, as promised Alexis Tsipras, the new prime minister of radical left, during his victorious campaign. The term “flexibility” will certainly be hotly debated for fear of several countries that Greece employing him for not fulfilling their commitments.
Just received the request for extension, the German Ministry of Finance, rejected with dryness and said that he saw no “substantial solution.” .
Athens filtered advocated by Germany in a preparatory meeting of senior officials of the Eurogroup, which illustrates all the distrust of Berlin on the new Greek government position: Germany compared his request to a “Trojan horse” for obtaining “bridge financing” several months “to end the current program” and therefore to the austerity measures it contains.
In a last attempt to convince Berlin, Alexis Tsipras held a telephone meeting about 50 minutes Thursday night with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Chancellor lunch this Friday in Paris with President François Hollande, with whom he will deal with the case of Athens.
On Friday, a Greek government spokesman denied that the executive has waived its election commitments.
“If the government had taken a 180 degree turn, we would have signed [agreement] ten days ago” in the preceding two meetings of the Eurogroup and failed.
No comments:
Post a Comment