E-mails land in the inboxes of the Troika and the Greek government seeking an agreement on what austerity measures the debt-ridden Greeks will have to take in order to fill the fiscal gap of 2.5 billion euro stated by the country’s international lenders EU, IMF and ECB.
The latste Troika -email arrived in Athens in the early morning hours of Wednesday and reportedly the Troikans seek additional explanations and guarantees that the Greeks will manage to fill the gap.
A couple of days ago, Greek sent to Troika a list of austerity proposals -among them Value Added Tax increasing from 6.5% to 13% for hotel accommodations, scrapping poverty allowances, lowering pensions etc -aiming to collect revenues of just 980 million euro in the first stage.
To make the long story short, many Greek media report that an agreement is most likely to be achieved by next Monday, December 8th, when the Eurogroup will meet in Brussels.
At the same time, Greece’s EU partners claim that “Greece will have to ask for an extension on its bailout programme before parliaments in euro zone nations close for Christmas because a new credit line will not be ready in time,” as a senior euro zone official told Reuters on Wednesday.
Apart from the fact that a bailout extension overturns PM Samaras’ latest slogan “We exit the bailout program”, I have not the slightest idea how the broke Greek society could cope with more austerity and a prolonged bailout program.
