The euro zone will not release additional bailout money for Greece at a meeting in Bratislava this month, E.U. diplomats told German daily Handelsblatt.
Athens has only implemented two of 15 political reforms that are conditions for the bailout money, the diplomats said. Above all, Greece has been slow to privatize state assets.
In May, the Eurogroup approved a tranche of €10.3 billion ($11.4 billion) for Greece from its €86-billion bailout package. Initially, €7.5 billion was transferred to Athens with the rest scheduled to arrive in the fall.
The diplomats told the Handelsblatt, that the Eurogroup will only discuss a progress report on Greece at the Bratislava meeting.
In fact, the diplomats did not reveal anything that is not already known and not expected as the Greek program Review is still ongoing and is expected to conclude in October, the earliest.
In an official statement, the Eurogroup said that in the Bratislava meeting on 9th September 2016,
“The Eurogroup will discuss progress made by Greece in achieving the milestones agreed in its financial assistance programme. Their accomplishment will open the way for the disbursement of further financial assistance under the second tranche.”
That tranche of 2.8billion euro “is attached to the successful completion of the first review of the programme, amounts to €10.3 billion; €7.5 billion of which was disbursed on 21 June 2016,” the statement on Greece concluded.he next eurogroup meeting is scheduled for 10th October 2016.
PS slow in privatizing state assets? Oh come on! State railways TRAINOSE was sold for €45million, that is for a price much lower than the price for one TV license (€43million – €75.9million).
TRAINOSE was actually sold for much more, be fair. The buyer took also the more than one billion of debt.
Expect Grexit in 2017/18,the measures asked of Greece are too draconian.The numbers do not add up, only way out of this mess IMO, is , to inflate the GDP, keep the liabilities such as pensions constant and this requires the devaluation of the euro, to 0.75e to US dollar.Now the EU has quarantined Greece through bank closures, usually these are done to set up a new currency, they have sanitized their banks from Greek debt, or they should have by now,and cut migrant flows from Greece, the EU can afford to cut Greece loose, which they eventually will.The US and European powers at the end of ww2 set up this centralized,state ownership of companies such as OTE and in the 80 years since ww2, they have done little or nothing to modernize the Greek economy, and now they expect Greece on it’s own to privatize billion dollar pensions, state companies etc , when the country can barely process a POS card transaction for baklava,has no land registry and little clue of who is actually living in their borders…a bit rich of them to ask all this of Greece…in 3-4 years and threaten the country with cutting financing.maybe Greece should just cut the EU loose?
absolutely. it should have been done in summer of 2015! at least then the country would begin a program of national reconstruction…
i’m afraid however, that the rapid unravelling of turkey will be a wild card in the unfolding of events…and greece unfortunately will be directly affected by the coming chaos and possible civil war next door…
‘Devaluation of the Euro to 0.75e to the US dollar’. More like a rate of 0.35e to the US dollar according to Bernard Connolly. The current rate of $1.15 is hopeless for Greece and will merely keep her in the deep freeze for decades. The Euro really is a wicked and evil construct.
It was Austria’s chancellor and state-railway boss Kurz telling the public he won’t take Trainose even for nothing and it’s Tsipras job to ask Austria for paying the minus of 300 million as Russians originally wanted to give 350 million.