Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos on Thursday expressed his optimism that a review of the Greek programme will be completed soon. Speaking in Parliament, the Greek FinMin strongly criticized the IMF for holding at hard stance both towards Greece, by asking for more measures, and towards Europe, to see the Greek debt issue. On the other hand, “our positions are very close” with the European Stability Mechanism, the European Central Bank and the Commission and differences existing are within the framework of negotiations and “could be discussed,” Tsakalotos said.
He said that during a speech in the European Parliament on Wednesday, he expressed “his strong concern” over the fact that “the institutions came to Greece February 1-5, they left for 10 days and since then a month has passed without returning“.
Economic conditions have improved
Tsakalotos said it was difficult to comprehend why the IMF asked for many more measures, compared with the ones agreed last summer, given the fact that economic conditions have improved markedly since then “and there is no one economist suggesting that we performed worse than expected, so the reasonable thing was to talk about less measures“.
The Greek Finance Minister said that pensions could be cut further in Greece since they played the role of basic family income and they have been cut 11 times in the past few years. Tsakalotos said he did not know whether a solution could be reach in the next Eurogroup, but expressed his confidence “that a solution will be found soon as there were too many players pushing for a solution the soonest possible“.
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