Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to suggest to European counterparts this week that the International Monetary Fund should be left out of the Greek program or remain as technical adviser. The Prime Minister is expected to make the proposal to French President Francois Hollande with whom he will have talks today, Wednesday, and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who he will meet at a working lunch on Friday.
Citing sources, daily Kathimerini notes that if an agreement cannot be reached on the proposal that the IMF be left out of the Greek program, “Tsipras will put forward the possibility of the Fund retaining just a technical role in the program.”
Athens believes that the political cost of the Fund remaining on board has become too high after the latest spat between the government and the Washington-based organization, which flared up as the institutions returned to the Greek capital for further talks aimed at completing the bailout review.
The talks resumed under a cloud after the IMF’s European director Poul Thomsen and head of research Maurice Obstfeld published a blog post on Monday night in which they denied that the Fund was responsible for asking Greece to adopt more austerity measures and claimed that the country’s pensions and tax benefits are still too generous.
Having the IMF out of the Greek program would mean no fourth bailout and no additional austerity measure 4.2billion euro. On the other hand, getting rid of the IMF and be depended solely on the policies of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is not a solution either. However, within the European creditors, a political solution could be possible, but impossible with the IMF.
For the Greek government, the dilemma is having to choose between Scylla and Charybdis.
PS or hope that the CDU and Schaeuble will lose the German elections in 2017 🙂
This is what mommie Merkel told Alex to leak to the press. Poor boy, he has to do something for his salary….
The IMF shouldn’t be involved at all. It is a EuroZone problem. Let them sort it out.
It would be nice if that would play their election and the best would be that they can’t build any government because of this but new Krauty governments never roll back like this, once the dirty job is done they’re happy – also due to their federal constitution.
If the CDU loses next year, the SPD will govern and I can guarantee you they will continue with the same old failed policies. After all, they supported said policies as partners of the CDU in the grand coalition for the last 5 years.
My only hope is that the IMF does completely get out, because then the CDU parliamentarians (which were pretty much promised IMF participation) may well force Germany out of it, too, and then the entire program will fall to pieces.
Fingers crossed things turn out this way. Indeed the only hope…