The representatives of Greece’s lenders, the so-called Troika, are leaving Athens, even though it seems that the negotiations on the spending savings package have not concluded yet. An EU Commission spokesman told reporters in Brussels, that the Troika “will be leaving this weekend and will return in about a week. the spokesman stressed that the interruption is not an indication of problems in the talks.
Time-out in Greek bailout talks, for ‘about a week’: EU
The “troika” of international creditors called time out Friday on lengthy bailout negotiations with the Greek government, deciding on a pause for about a week“The discussions since the beginning of September have been very intense,” Simon O’Connor, spokesman for EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a regular news conference, saying negotiators were “leaving this weekend” and “returning in about a week”. (AFP via msn)
To tell you the truth, I do not quite understand why there is an “interruption of the talks” worth mentioning in an EC press conference, when everybody in Greece knew that Poul Thomsen (IMF), Matthias Morse (EU) and Klaus Mazouch (ECB) were to leave Athens on upcoming Sunday or Monday.
The Troika’s technical teams will remain in Athens to continue the talks, Greek media reported.
Greece’s economic team seems confident to reach a final agreement with the Troika in the next days, even on Friday afternoon, when Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras will hold another meeting with the three representatives.
Greek government struggles to scratch together spending savings worth 11.5 billion euro. At the same time, everybody seemed to have forgotten, that the Memorandum of Understanding signed in march was foreseeing a additional tax revenues of 2-3 billion euro.
The Poll Tax ‘bomb’ exploded last night, with the Greek economic team leaking to the press that a poll tax of at least 150 euro will be imposed on self-employed, property owners with income from leases and eventually some other group of taxpayers.
It looks as if even the coalition government parties had forgotten this tiny but important sentence in the MoU while they were all promising “no additional taxes” – before the June elections.
