Final decisions by institutions lenders over the Greek program have now been left for the upcoming Eurogroup meeting of May 24, although Monday’s extraordinary session signed off on an “automatic” spending cuts mechanism to ensure that Greece meets fiscal goals through 2018, while issue of Greek debt sustainability was broached by creditors for the first time at an official venue.
Even the usually cautious German FinMin Wolfgang Schauble was upbeat in comments beforehand, saying the next Eurogroup will focus on the “contingency” mechanism and debt sustainability.
Next up for the leftist Greek government is to close all “open issues”, via the legislative route, ahead of the May 24 Eurogroup meeting, namely, liberalization of the framework for the resale of non-performing loans to the secondary market; passing the remaining one-third of the 5.4-billion-euro package of measures that will be derived from indirect taxes and establishment of a new structure for a privatization fund.
