The Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the government Vice President Evangelos Venizelos are confident that despite the many problems, they will be in the position to come to an agreement with the troika.
While the government leaders insist that the troika agreement will be reached before the Presidential elections, the tight timetable necessitates that a lot of outstanding issues are resolved by the end of the year. These include critical issues such as the completion of the troika’s review, the details of the precautionary credit line and clarifying the role of the IMF.
On Monday the PM and VP were joined in a meeting by the Ministers of Finances Gikas Hardouvelis and Christos Staikouras, along with State Minister Dimitris Stamatis and consultants Chrysanthos Lazaridis and Stavros Papastavrou, in order to discuss the 19 issues that the troika considers unresolved.
An unnamed central government officer told To Vima that the “there is no chance” of the government backing regarding the budget and argued that despite the conflict with the troika, an agreement will nevertheless be reached. The coalition government’s main goal is for the troika review to be complete by the Eurogroup scheduled for the 8th of December, although it seems likely that more time will be needed.
From then on the focus will be in preventing early general elections being called due to the Presidential elections that must take place by March 2015. On his way out of the PM’s office on Monday Mr. Venizelos set the tone, by telling journalists that “as a people and nations we will either chose a solution for we fought for and made sacrifices, which is not only organized and sure, or we will chose other solutions, which are vague, high risk and jeopardize the Greek people’s sacrifices”.
