Eurogroup rejects the “unprofessional” Greek plan of reforms

(in collaboration with Termometro Politico)

The list of the seven reforms that Greece has sent to the European Union seems to be deceptive: Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup, stated that the EU wouldn’t pay any aid in March. According to the EU the “technical” negotiation for the disbursement of the financial aids is still ongoing. It represents a serious damage for Tsipras government. Shall the Greeks go to elections again?

The hypothesis of a referendum seems to be actually real. Yanis Varoufakis, the Ministry of Finance, confirmed that, and explained that the referendum would concern the measures which are requested to exit the crisis if the creditor institutions (ECB, UE, FMI) and the Eurozone partners would exceed the limit imposed by Athens and ” enhance the requests”.

No aid for Athens

The ECB repeatedly has stated that, at the moment, it doesn’t accept any Greeek bond as a garrantee. The ECB will start to accept them again only when Greece will demonstrate that the country can respect its commitments with international creditors. Past Saturday, the Prime Minister of Greece, Tsipras, asked to the ECB to resist political pressures. In any case, if Athens doesn’t obtain the European aids, it would obtain the permission to issue short term bonds in order to respond to the most urgent needs, at least: salaries and pensions. Mario Draghi restated one more time that the ECB is not a political institution and cannot finance directly any single government.

Poor solutions to unlock aids

There is a clear agreement between the Eurogroup and the Greece. It establishes that the Greece has to deliver a complete and detailed programme of reforms within April or, in any case, not over June. Only if Athens carries out the programme in advance, after convincing the EU, it could obtain financial aids sooner. Then, not today. Momentarily, the Eurogroup rejects the Greece because it considers the recently proposed list of reforms absolutely incomplete and not reliable. According to some analysts, some of the measures presented by the Greece government are even “unprofessional”. For example, the idea of using tourists and youngsters as anonymous inspectors to fight fiscal evasion. According to the operative staff in Brussels the solutions which were proposed until today aren’t enough to unlock the last tranche of the aids of about 7,2 billion.

ARIANNA BONI

Master’s degree in Law (University of Bari “Aldo Moro”)

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