Greece’s Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos on Tuesday
There will be no new commitments and terms for Greece after the memorandum, said Valdis Drombrovskis, European Commission Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue, on Friday, adding that the country was returning to normality and the “European Semester” with the submission of reports to the European Commission on fiscal data.
The meeting between Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz on Friday was held in a positive atmosphere, according to finance ministry’s sources.
The countdown of talks leading to Greece’s completion of its fiscal adjustment programme will begin at a Euroworking Group (EWG) meeting on Thursday.
BRUSSELS (ANA/Ch. Vasilaki) – The countdown of talks leading to Greece’s completion of its fiscal adjustment programme will begin at a Euroworking Group (EWG) meeting on Thursday.
The first round of contacts between government representatives and the heads of the institutions’ missions to Greece, in the context of the fourth programme review, was completed on Thursday. According to a senior finance ministry official “it was a successful mission.”
Greek taxpayers will see a tax reduction of 3.5 billion euros in the near future, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said in Iraklio, Crete, on Friday.
Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos explained on Wednesday the reasons he is not in favour of a credit line after Greece’s exit from the loan memoranda and why he considers Greece’s joining the European Central Bank’s (ECB) quantitative easing programme a positive move but not necessary for returning to the markets.
The implementation of the Greek programme will be the first order of the day when Euro area finance ministers convene in Brussels at 16:00 Greek time, in a meeting also attended by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.
Greece is ready to venture forth on its own without support, while it wants the “cleanest possible” exit from the financial assistance programme when this ends in the summer, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said in interviews to the French newspaper “Les Echos” and the “Financial Times” this weekend.