After 12 hours of talks in Brussels between Eurozone finance chiefs and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde failed to reach an agreement on how to manage Greece’s runaway debt and unlock a long-delayed $38.8 billion loan, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he would meet with the financial bloc’s leader, Jean-Claude Juncker.
A dismayed Samaras, who had rammed through the Parliament an unpopular $17.45 billion spending cut and tax hike program demanded by lenders in return for more aid, headed for Brussels on Nov. 21, hours after the long talks failed, to prepare for a Nov. 22-23 meeting of European Union leaders and to talk to Juncker.
Samaras also canceled a planned trip to Qatar to discuss investments in Greece to attend the planned Nov. 26 resumption of the Greece debt talks in Brussels between the Eurozone leaders, who wanted to give Greece two more years, until 2016, to meet fiscal targets, and with Lagarde, who does not.
Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader, is overseeing an uneasy coalition government with the PASOK Socialists and the Democratic Left, and the three parties’ popularity is waning fast because they support harsh austerity measures demanded by the Troika of the EU-IMF-European Central Bank.
After the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) said that Greece was being “humiliated” by the Troika and the failed talks, Samaras called on the lenders to meet their commitments and PASOK chief Evangelos Venizelos called on the country’s partners and creditors to refrain from using Greece as an “alibi” in the face a broader European crisis, reiterating that the cash-strapped country had “repeatedly taken tough decisions.”
The Eurogroup ministers said in a statement at the end of talks that no deal had been reached and they would meet again on Nov. 26 “for further technical work on some elements of the package,” keeping Samaras and Greece twisting in the wind. The ministers had gone into the negotiations expressing confidence that a deal would be reached to unblock 31.1 billion euros ($38.8 billion) in in aid to Greece and resolve a rift with Lagarde over how to get the debt-stricken state’s economy back on track.
But the meeting ended with a statement saying only that they “made progress in identifying a consistent package of credible initiatives aimed at making a further substantial contribution to the sustainability of Greek government debt.” Lagarde told reporters as she left the meeting only that, “It was progress but we have to do a little bit more.”
Venizelos, a former finance minister in a previous government, added that the issue of the Greek debt’s sustainability had been raised before and had led to tough and lengthy negotiation back in February. “Disagreement between the Eurozone and the IMF is nothing new either,” added Venizelos, who said that the two sides should have reached a decision.
The issue of the debt’s sustainability needs to be finalized within the next few days, said Venizelos, not only because Greece “needs and deserves a new starting point” but also because the Eurozone was in urgent need of developing a framework of self-protection and perspective.
(Sources: AAP, Kathimerini, Reuters)
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