Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will pay a lightning visit to Paris on Wednesday for talks with French President Francois Hollande, a meeting where the former is expected to press Athens’ positions in ongoing – and still tenuous - negotiations with its institutional creditors.
The Paris visit will come ahead of this weekend’s annual IMF spring meeting in Washington, which will be followed by what is expected to be an “express round” of negotiations with creditors in Athens next week. The target for a conclusion of negotiations with the “quartet” of creditors – Commission, ECB, ESM, IMF – leading to a first review of the Greek program is still April 22. That date coincides with a Eurogroup meeting.
In meeting with his Portuguese counterpart in Athens this week, Tsipras was quoted as saying that “no one can deprive us of our right to choose the means by which we will achieve our goals.” The statement was viewed as criticism of the IMF’s unbending stance towards the leftist Greek government and its proposals to meeting fiscal goals and implement reforms.
Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos echoed the statement on Tuesday, after announcing that two draft bills -- on pension reforms and tax measuresb -- will be tabled in Parliament next week.
Tsakalotos also said that Athens retains the right to reach memorandum targets in a manner that it alone decides.
Even more telling is a statement by a government official, who said the Tsipras government is not proceeding with unilateral decisions or returning a climate of acrimonious negotiations reminiscent of the first half of 2015, merely noting that “the intent is to record the two sides’ differences, and since this was not achieved through negotiations, the government will do this with the draft bills.”
The process by which the two draft bills are tabled will follow the normal legislative procedure, the same source said, leaving open the possibility for an agreement with lenders before a scheduled vote on the bills takes place at the end of the month.
Tsipras is expected back in Athens on Friday.
