Greece made its first official request for a further debt relief at the Euro Working Group in Brussels. This does not mean much in substance for the time being, as the International Monetary Fund may supports the idea, but Greece’s European partners -especially the Germans – reject it. And they will continue to do so until the European Parliament elections. “But technically, the debt relief procedure started,” I heard this morning on a private television channel. In the sense, that “technically” the discussion about the debt relief started once the government made the request.
“Greece made its first official request on Thursday for further debt relief as the Euro Working Group (EWG) met in Brussels to rubber-stamp the 2013 primary surplus and approve the release of another 6.3 billion euros in bailout funding.
A day after the European Commission confirmed that Greece’s surplus for 2013, as calculated using the troika’s methodology, stood at 1.5 billion euros, the country’s representative at the EWG made a request for more debt-lightening measures. Panos Tsakloglou, chairman of Greece’s Council of Economic Experts, reminded his counterparts of the Eurogroup’s November 2012 pledge to examine debt relief steps once Greece produced a primary surplus.
Sources told Kathimerini that the other members of the EWG agreed that these discussions should take place during the course of the next troika review of the Greek adjustment program. The Eurogroup’s advisory body also agreed that Greece’s next loan tranche should be disbursed. Subsequently, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) announced that it would be transferring 6.3 billion euros to Greece, taking the total it has lent the Greek government to 139.9 billion euros. Two further tranches of 1 billion euros each are due to be released in the weeks to come as long as Greece meets reform milestones agreed with its lenders.” (full article ekathimerini)
I don’t know how long the discussion will take but I understand that the new Greek debt relief will not be in form of a second PSI (Greek bonds swap) but in form of repayment extension. Technically.
PS “primary surplus”, ” social dividend” and “debt relief” will be the slogans of PM Samaras for the upcoming municipality and EU-Parliament elections, while the opposition will stick to the austerity measures still to be implemented.
