He has been suspiciously quiet lately. Apparently because he had nothing new to say. But today, he thought it was time to raise hand and catch Athens’ eye. Just in case, the Greeks wanted to make some short of secret arrangements with noble guest EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici or something. Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem crawled back from the land of the Invisible and said:
Prior actions must precede loans to Greece
“Dutch Finance Minister and Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Tuesday repeated his government’s position on the disbursement of loans to Greece, in a briefing letter to Dutch lawmakers, saying that the release of funds will only take place if the terms of the loan agreement are fulfilled.
He said the upcoming Eurogroup meeting next Monday will discuss the current situation and the progress in implementing the prior actions, as envisaged by the Greek programme.
Dijsselbloem said two sub-tranches of 2.0 billion and 1.0 billion euros from the first installment had yet to be disbursed and that their disbursement would depend on the implementation of two groups of prior actions. He noted that Greece has passed legislation for the first group, linked to the disbursement of the first 2.0 billion, while talks are currently underway between Greek officials and representatives of the institutions on implementing the remaining prior actions in the first group.” (AthensNewsAgency)
PS I think I heard a slight undertone in his voice … had the feeling that it was Schaeuble speaking. I may have been wrong though.
He is busy with his own scandals in the Netherlands. There is a big scandal involving a high speed train system that cost over a billion Euro and so far no high speed train service is taking place. The ordered trains from Italy were highly inadequate and were sent back. He and an under minister were involved in not or insufficiently and even wrongly informing the parliament about the case. A damaging inquiry showed their neglect and even lying to the parliament. The under minister had to go, he is still there. And today it surfaced that he allowed the ING Bank to write their own tax law….
So he was too busy to deal with these ‘corrupt’ Greek.