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Samaras Says Surplus Topped 1.5B Euros, 70% To Austerity Victims

Greek Premier Antonis Samaras says his government will last until 2016
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said the country’s primary surplus – not counting interest on debt and a slew of other costs – has surpassed 1.5 billion euros ($2.03) billion, enough to stave off the need for additional aid from international lenders and also a trigger for debt relief so the country won’t have to pay back all the $325 billion it owes in two bailouts.
“The primary budget surplus is much higher than we had initially estimated … I am telling you now that it exceeds 1.5 billion euros, three times as big as we initially calculated,” Samaras said in an interview published in Sunday’s edition of Greek newspaper To Vima.
He had previously pledged to return 70 percent of that – which, by Finance Ministry calculations would be 1.05 billion euros ($1.43 billion) to those most affected by harsh austerity measures imposed by the government on orders of the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB).
It would also provide a big boost for Samaras’ beleagued coalition of his New Democracy Conservatives and his partner, the fast-fading PASOK Socialists who barely register in polls that show the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) has taken a lead on the back of its promise to renege on the rescue aid deal and end austerity.
If Samaras keeps his promise to give most of the money to people hit hardest by big pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions it could coincide with May elections for Greek municipalities and for the European Parliament, which SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said would repudiate the ruling parties and bring him to power.
The announcement has already drawn skepticism from EU leaders who doubt the validity of the claim, and because the primary surplus also doesn’t include the cost of state and municipal enterprises, social security and some military expenditures – plus a reported coming court order the government has to repay members of the military some 500 million euros ($684.65 million) in back pay that was cut in violation of the Constitution.
It also comes as Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras is due back in Brussels on Feb. 17 and as Troika envoys are set to return to Athens to negotiate how the government plans to close a 2.4 billion euro ($3.28 billion) hole in the budget and proceed with long-stalled reforms.
Samaras wants Stournaras to wrap up the talks before the elections and the June 30 end of Greece’s symbolic tenure as the holder of the European Union Presidency that began Jan. 1, and during which it has done almost nothing.
A top-ranking European official told Kathimerini that both sides want resolution. “Europeans want the evaluation of 2013 to conclude as soon as possible,” the official said, referring to a Troika review that began in September.
The official added that Europeans were prepared to tone down their demands on some of the more-disputed issues, including easing off demands for more public worker firings and for a faster pace of privatization, which was supposed to bring in 50 billion euros but has rendered only 2.6 billion so far.
The EU, which backs Samaras because he has supported the austerity it wants, also reportedly doesn’t want to see him under more political pressure and to help him fend off a possible big SYRIZA victory as the Leftist leader Alexis Tsipras has said he would renegotiate, revise or renege on the loans, leaving the taxpayers in the other 17 Eurozone countries to pick up the tab for generations of wild overspending by New Democracy and PASOK, who hired hundreds of thousands of needless workers in return for votes.
There is also concern that gains will be made by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party whose leaders Samaras ordered jailed and tried on charges of operating a criminal gang, a tactic which seems not to have cut into the base support for the extremists.
Stournaras is under pressure to get a deal before the next scheduled meeting of Eurozone finance officials on March 10. The biggest remaining obstacles include 153 unfinished reforms identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and ratification of the size of the primary surplus by the European Commission’s statistics service Eurostat.
Greece could also benefit from political play. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde had flatly ruled out debt relief for Greece but said the EU and ECB should take losses. Now, however, she reportedly wants the job of European Commission President and is said to be backing off from that demand.
A remaining sticking point is whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country puts up most of the rescue loans and is making huge profits off them at the same time she has insisted on austerity, would also relent on debt relief, which would force Germans among other Eurozone cities to pick up the bill for Greece.
A previous Greek government in 2011, when current PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos was finance minister, stiffed private investors for 74 percent losses, destroying Cypriot banks and wiping out many Diaspora bond holders.
He is now Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister, rewarded by Samaras for backing austerity even though it has cost PASOK, which is registering at 3-5 percent in polls.
Fearing a disaster in the elections, Venizelos has aligned his party with The 58 Initiative, a collection of academics, intellectuals and Leftists trying to hold the center of the movement together.

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