Last updated: March 9, 2015 9:00 pm
Greek talks with creditors finally to start
Detailed talks between Greece and its bailout creditors will begin in both Brussels and Athens on Wednesday after a two-week stand-off that officials fear may have harmed their ability to reach a deal to distribute funds to the cash-strapped country before it runs out of money.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who heads the eurogroup of his eurozone colleagues, said the disagreement over where to hold the meetings — the new Greek government has resisted the return of bailout monitors to Athens — had been “a complete waste of time” and urged both sides to work quickly.
“We have spent now two weeks apparently discussing who meets whom where in what configuration and on what agenda,” said Mr Dijsselbloem after a eurogroup meeting where Greece was discussed only briefly. “We’ve talked long enough now. Let’s start on Wednesday, starting in Brussels — the main talks in Brussels — but some people will have to be on the ground in Athens from the institutions.”
Despite an agreement last month to extend Greece’s €172bn bailout into June, Athens is unable to access any of the remaining €7.2bn in the programme unless it agrees a reform programme with the bailout’s three bailout monitors: the European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund.
Yanis Varoufakis, the Greece finance minister, has requested talks with the monitors, formerly known as the “troika”, be held in Brussels after his government promised to dismantle the set-up. But officials have insisted for weeks that without access to mid-level officials and documents in Athens, a full review of Greece’s current economic and fiscal position was impossible.
“That’s the only way we can do it,” Mr Dijsselbloem said.
Mr Varoufakis acknowledged that bailout monitors would travel to Athens as part of the negotiating process, but insisted they would be dealing with the Greek government in a different way than previous “troika” missions.
“The idea of troika visits comprising cabals of technocrats from the three institutions in lockstep walking to our ministries and trying to implement a programme which has failed, at least in the estimation of our government and I think of our people, that is a thing of the past,” he said.
The Greek minister also took issue with Mr Dijsselbloem’s assessment that detailed bailout talks had been unnecessarily delayed, saying his government had been working on a series of “batches” of economic reforms that they intend to implement.
“There’s been no time wasted, not by the Greek government,” he said.
Despite fears in some quarters that the Greek government could face a cash shortfall as soon as the end of this week, one senior troika official said Athens had been able to access money from the accounts of independent government agencies that should be able to carry Greece through to the end of the month.
Mr Varoufakis declined to comment when asked about the government’s cash position.
Athens had hoped that it could access a quick injection of cash by either getting permission from the ECB to issue more short-term Treasury bills or agreeing a short list of reforms that could be implemented immediately in return for bailout funding.
But the senior troika official said that at last week’s ECB meeting, central bankers decided against raising Greece’s €15bn Treasury bill ceiling, and Mr Dijsselbloem said no bailout cash could be disbursed until Athens came to agreement with monitors on all economic reforms the government would implement.
“There can be no talk of early disbursements if there is no agreement and no implementation,” Mr Dijsselbloem said. “I would be open at one point, if we have agreement on the whole thing, and the implementation is well off the ground, I would consider having the disbursements cut into parts.”