By N. Bellos
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The EU Commission continued to step up its interventions in favor of a comprehensive agreement for Greece at today's Eurogroup meeting in Brussels, as behind-the-scenes deliberations continued over the weekend to find "common ground" between the IMF and European creditors, especially Berlin.
Nevertheless, according to a Eurozone official who spoke with "N", the weekend contacts yielded little, leaving the final result to be decided by the Euro Area's finance ministers at the Eurogroup setting today.
Information circulated late Sunday revealed that IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde will not attend Monday's meeting in Brussels, with other reports stating that even the IMF's European director, Poul Thomsen, will be a "no show".
In a bid to "hedge" its bets in case no substantive progress emerges from Monday's meeting, the Greek side has pointed to an agreement in the coming days, possibly at an extraordinary Eurogroup meeting.
According to the leftist Greek government's narrative, since the IMF's participation in the bailout program is considered as more-or-less compulsory by European creditors, and given the Fund's insistence on the point of the Greek debt's sustainability, the positive result will be debt relief in tandem with the conclusion of the second review of the Greek program - which is now more than a year in delay.
Attention will be focused on the earlier EWG meeting on Monday, which is charged with producing the draft agreement to be presented to EZ finance ministers. The draft will be the basis for discussions among ministers. It's at this point that Berlin's position on the Greek debt issue in the current phase will be fully clarified and articulated, by none other than German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble.
According to a German finance ministry official quoted by "Bild" on Saturday, there is no agreement over debt relief at the moment - as far as Berlin is concerned -- a statement, however, that is viewed as a non sequitur, given that no official or European partner has publicly referred to a write-off of Greece's debt.
Given that the second review of the Greek program is, by all accounts, concluded, attention has now shifted to the issue of debt and fiscal targets, i.e. annual primary budget surplus targets as a percentage of GDP.
In terms of the latter, what is unresolved is the number of years that the very ambitious 3.5-percent figure (per annum) will be place, beyond the four or five years now forecast. According to certain reports, the German side wants a 2.5-percent primary budget surplus target (as a percentage of GDP) for after 2022 or 2023, a high figure that would relieve pressure on European creditors to reduce Greece's debt -- assuming the country actually meets the specific goal on an annual basis.
The more realistic figure favored by the IMF is a fiscal target of 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP on a yearly basis.
In terms of the debt, European creditors are expected to align themselves with a decision taken in May 2016, when the Eurogroup at the time approved a "road map" for short-term and medium-term debt relief measures, with the former already being implemented.
