Hollande Tells Samaras to Wait for Troika Report

After being put on hold by German Chancellor Angela Merkel over his hope Greece could get a two-year delay to administer more reforms and austerity measures demanded by international lenders, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been told by French President Francois Hollande to wait for a report on the country’s progress first.
In a meeting in Paris, the French leader – who was elected on an anti-austerity platform – reiterated Merkel’s message: that they first want to see what inspectors from the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) determine.
That report is due in October, but Samaras’ uneasy coalition government is under the gun to make $14.16 billion in cuts and speed the pace of privatization, but he said the pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that came with bailouts have worsened the country’s recession and delayed recovery. He did not explicitly raise the idea of a delay with Merkel, however.
With Hollande telling him to be patient, Samaras’ Berlin-Paris swing essentially accomplished nothing and leaves Greece where it was before he went to meet the German and French leaders. Greece is expected next month to receive a $38.8 billion installment, the last in a first series of $152 billion in rescue loans, while a second for $173 billion is in limbo.
“On the European side, we are waiting for the Troika report … once we have this report, once the commitments … are confirmed, Europe has to do what it has to do,” Hollande said. “We’ve been facing this question for 2-1/2 years, there’s no time to lose, there are commitments to reaffirm on both sides, decisions to take, and the sooner the better, that means after the Troika report at the European summit in October.”
Merkel and Hollande agreed that Greece should stay in the Eurozone, the financial bloc of 17 countries using the euro as a currency but said it was up to Samaras and not them, and that he had to meet his country’s commitments in return for the money, without which Greece will be broke and unable to pay workers and pensioners.
The office of Socialist PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who, along with the Democratic Left is in the coalition with Samaras’ New Democracy Conservatives, issued a statement saying that Venizelos and Hollande, also a Socialist, had spoken by telephone. Venizelos presented Hollande with Greece’s «national strategy,” the PASOK leader’s office said.
 
(Sources: Reuters, Kathimerini)