Government shocked by the Troika and Rehn

The government is in shock over two questions put by Olli Rehn at the Ecofin in Brussels and two raised by the Troika in Athens after the meeting with George Koutroumanis The dominant issue is how far our lenders will go until they release the 6th tranche.

- The EU commissioner’s first question was about the sufficiency of the measures and the second about whether the government is able to implement them.
- The Troika asked the labor minister about the state of business contracts and of heavy and unhealthy professions, while also raising the issue of wage cuts in the private sector.

Thus, our lenders made both the submission of the budget on Monday morning and the issue of redundancy seem like yesterday’s news.

Now, everybody is thinking of Thursday and the submission of the multi-bill with redundancies, supplementary pensions and all open issues which the Troika awaits for in order to release the sixth tranche. The whole thing has sparked new questions within the government and the parliamentary group:

“Will you pay on the 15th or the 31st?”, a financial staff member was asked by an MP from PASOK. “I don’t know”, he replied. “Will you move to elections then?”, the MP continued. “Why? To get 9% of votes?”, the minister continued. Then, there is no other way than coalition governing, the MP concluded.

Within this climate, the government spokesman said they might stop all hiring in the public sector: “We will apply the 1-to-10 rule, that is 1 hiring for every 10 redundancies, and if needs be will make it 0-to-10 for the coming years”. Regarding Simitis’ article, he did not hide his annoyance: “From time to time I hear all these generalized comments. For once I would love to hear about bold policies with very specific data and numbers. It is very easy to be vague”.

The result is that some of the PASOK MPs are now seeking the …emergency exit! Kostas Kartalis called early elections a sign of irresponsibility, but appeared open to a coalition government. Yannis Amoiridis reiterated that in democracies there are no dead ends and Evi Christophilopoulou accused Theodoros Pangalos because by delaying the mergers he led the government to the option of redundancy.