By Y. Kanoupakis
[email protected]
The Greek government spokesman appeared confident on Monday that whatever new austerity measures will be enacted and simultaneously implemented with corresponding countervailing measures, with the latter "certainly" activated if a primary budget surplus target for 2018 is achieved.
The remark, by spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, came in response to a report showing that Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem has sent the Dutch Parliament a document stating, essentially, that "only if" Greece met fiscal targets would off-set measures be considered.
Euro Working Group president Thomas Wieser, in his recent interview with "N", had also clarified that countervailing measures would be implemented "only after" creditors determined that fiscal targets were over-exceeded in a structural and viable manner.
Back in Athens, Tzanakopoulos dismissed a proposal by Interior Minister Panos Skourletis to aim for a larger majority in Parliament in support of any new austerity package.
Skourletis said an extended Parliamentary majority is necessary, given that the measures would involve a period after 2019 - a period when the current government's tenure will have ended.
The spokesman dismissed the minister's proposal as a "personal view", while merely adding that the current leftist-rightist coalition government can count on 153 out of 300 deputies in Parliament to ratify the package.
