All-in-one: PSI, new loan and new measures requested by the Troika

All-in-one: PSI, new loan and new measures are requested by the Troika

As advised by the PM to involved ministers, the lenders are insisting on abolishing the 13th and 14th salaries, since they are not instituted in the rest of Europe. They also insist on the reduction of employee social insurance contributions and flexibility of labor relations.

They also wish to see an end to the privileges of public utilities and advance structural reforms and privatizations. The situation for the government becomes more difficult, since there has already been a 2bn-euro “hole” in this year’s budget.

The government meeting decided to try and find the money by reducing expenditure on medicines and defense. For now, that is, they excluded taxes and other horizontal cuts. The meeting was attended by Evangelos Venizelos, Dimitris Reppas, Tassos Giannitsis, Dimitris Avramopoulos, Michalis Chrisochoidis, Anna Diamantopoulou, Andreas Loverdos, Makis Voridis, Giorgos Koutroumanis, Christos Papoutsis and Filippos Sachinidis.

Both the details of the new loan agreement and the developments on the path of the Greek debt “haircut”, on which Berlin is anticipating an agreement, will be discussed in a pre-agenda debate in Parliament on February 10th, at the request of SYRIZA president Alexis Tsipras.