Hoping to beat the clock before Greece takes over the symbolic, but powerless, rotating Presidency of the European Union for six months on Jan. 1, the government is pushing to conclude a deal with its international lenders before then to secure release of a delayed one billion euros ($1.37 billion) installment and close the door on lagging reforms.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras met Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras and Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to talk about how the government will prepare for the return of envoys in December of the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB).
The officials left last week without securing an agreement on how Greece will cover a hole in the 2014 budget of as much as 2.9 billion euros – athough Samaras later said there wasn’t one and that going after tax cheats and cutting waste, both of which he’s failed to do – would be enough to balance the books.
Samaras, who met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin last week, pushed his ministers to get cracking on reforms they have set aside despite the urgency of the delayed loans.
On exiting the Maximos Mansion, Stournaras said Greece had to reach an agreement with the Troika on the release of the next bailout tranche and next year’s fiscal gap before the beginning of the 2014. “We will find the solution,” said Stournaras. “This has to happen.”
The biggest obstacles before the Troika return, which will come around the time of a Dec. 9 meeting of Eurozone finance chiefs, are the government’s reluctance to pare down, shut down or sell off the money-bleeding defense industry EAS and finish a list of 4,000 civil servants to be fired by the end of the year.
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