Sembra che le cose siano lungi dall'essere risolte
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb790812-cf22-11e4-9949-00144feab7de.html#axzz3V3PAMZPt
March 20, 2015 7:31 pm
Greek bailout summit ends in disarray
Peter Spiegel in BrusselsAuthor alerts
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras arrives for a statement during an European Council summit on March 20, 2015 at the Council of the European Union (EU) Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. European leaders meet for a two-day summit likely to be dominated by Greece's cash crunch. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYS©AFP
Greece’s prime minister and fellow eurozone leaders emerged from a meeting early on Friday morning touting a breakthrough agreement to unlock much-needed bailout funds for Athens — only to fall into disagreement hours later about what it all meant.
Two days of intensive and occasionally heated negotiations at an EU summit in Brussels amounted to little more than a repeat of talks a month ago between eurozone finance ministers that officials then also hailed as the definitive agreement to get the final bailout review under way.
So similar were the two deals that, much like the one finalised last month, leaders involved in the talks could not agree on what was agreed within 12 hours after a late-night meeting aimed at resolving all differences.
Athens is facing a severe cash crunch. It needs fresh sources of financing to pay wages and pensions at the end of this month following a €1bn revenue shortfall in the first two months of the year, according to Athens bankers.
At the centre of the dispute is what reforms Athens must undertake to access €7.2bn in rescue aid, and how eurozone lenders can verify that Greece’s radical anti-austerity government is actually implementing them.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made clear at a post-summit news conference that the starting point for Alexis Tsipras, Greek prime minister, was a December 10 inventory of incomplete reforms promised by the previous Greek government. “The Greek government has the opportunity to pick individual reforms that are still outstanding as of 10 December and replace them with other reforms if they . . . have the same effect,” Ms Merkel said.
It is a potentially incendiary demand since the document Ms Merkel referred to — a letter written by Greece’s then centre-right prime minister Antonis Samaras and his finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis — was the focus of particular scorn for Mr Tsipras’s far-left Syriza party on the campaign trail.
Mr Tsipras insisted at his own press conference that Ms Merkel was mistaken. “Forget the commitment of the former government. There are no austerity measures. There is no letter of Hardouvelis,” Mr Tsipras argued. “I asked [the other leaders]: do you expect me to . . . go through this evaluation and implement measures that Mr Samaras was not able to implement? The answer was no.”
The verbal hostilities resumed even though the crisis meeting — which also included French president François Hollande and Mario Draghi, European Central Bank chief — was described by the participants as amicable.
I asked [the other leaders]: do you expect me to . . . go through this evaluation and implement measures that Mr Samaras was not able to implement? The answer was no
- Alexis Tsipras
According to people briefed on the talks, Mr Tsipras opened with demands for additional cash with few strings attached, acknowledging his government may not make it to the end of April without an injection of bailout funds. But his push lasted only the first 10 minutes before the other leaders convinced him it was unachievable.
Instead, much of the session focused on logistical arrangements in Athens, where Greek officials have thrown up hurdles to international bailout monitors seeking to access data to evaluate the country’s reform efforts.
Mr Draghi was particularly incensed, telling Mr Tsipras he believed the inspectors — from the ECB, European Commission and International Monetary Fund — had been badly treated by their hosts. Mr Tsipras countered that allowing such access would be a violation of Greek sovereignty. But he relented after Ms Merkel noted all IMF members are subject to annual reviews involving access to a country’s books.
The Greek finance ministry, meanwhile, signalled it was adopting a new conciliatory stance, saying officials “look forward to receiving” requests from the inspectors and would respond “in the same constructive spirit”.
