Euro ministers impatient for Greece review
GREEK finance minister Yannis Stournaras was under the spotlight at yesterday’s meeting of Eurozone finance ministers, after the Eurogroup president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said the Troika’s review of the country is taking too long.
Dijsselbloem told a press conference in Brussels that the review by the Troika was taking too long, and that it was in the interests of the country’s international lenders and the government to resolve it more quickly.
The meeting preceded today’s gathering of all the EU’s finance ministers, the first to be conducted under the Greek presidency of the single market.
Despite a primary surplus this year, there is still a funding gap for the Greek government in the year ahead.
The International Monetary Fund, which makes up a third of the Troika, said that the country will face an €11bn (£9.06bn) shortfall in 2014-15, after the end of the group’s current package of bailout aid.
“Greece also has achieved most of the structural reform milestones, including putting more than 12,500 public sector workers into a transfer reserve. But the reform of the property tax, the end of the moratorium on foreclosures and the specification of €1bn of spending cuts for 2014 continue to prevent the conclusion of the review,” said Berenberg analysts, suggesting that the picture for the country seems less promising than it did last summer.