EU gives Greece days to submit reforms plan, get funds
The European Union has reportedly offered Greece nearly a week to present its package of reforms for its international bailout plan before it can mull releasing the emergency funding to keep the Greek economy afloat.
The offer was revealed Saturday by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) citing Eurozone representatives, who expressed “shock” at the lack of action by Athens in its implementation of structural reforms in exchange for pledged loans, giving the country until April 20 to submit its reform plans ahead of the April 24 meeting of the Eurozone ministers.
According to the German daily, participants at the latest round of Greece talks in Brussels unanimously described the meeting as “shocking,” complaining that the Greek representative Nikos Theocharakis kept inquiring about the money “like a taxi driver” and further cautioned that Greece would soon be bankrupt.
Greece and the EU negotiators have tried to make headway over the final payout of 7.2 billion euros. The administration of Alexis Tsipras, elected in January on an anti-austerity ticket, is hesitant about accepting further cuts in public spending and is rather looking at increasing national revenues through improving tax compliance.
This is while the country’s total debt to the troika of international creditors, comprising the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), amounts to nearly $270 billion.
Athens has managed to negotiate an extension of the bailout deal into late June 2015, but EU member states insist that in order to unlock the next aid package the Greek government has to come up with a detailed list of reforms with some of them enacted into law.
MFB/NT
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