Unsolved issues before Samaras’ meeting with troika

After the meeting between Samaras and troika at 6 this afternoon the two sides must reach an agreement as the prime minister will be in Brussels on Thursday for the EU summit.

The issue of collecting property tax via PPC bills in 2013 as troika asks or its replacement by a single property tax proposed by the government is still open as is the issue of regulating the tranches owed to the IRS and the reform of the tax collecting mechanism.

Troika does not trust the capabilities of the tax collection mechanism and therefore requests an extension of the real estate tax via PPC. For these issues, as well as for the mobility of civil servants the Greek premier met yesterday with Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis who insist on favorable regulations while Venizelos even proposed a comprehensive negotiation at EU level. But that is not desired by Samaras who prefers to close his meeting with mutual trade-offs.

In the past few days there were meetings and negotiations between troika and the responsible ministers and other officials of ministries. Samaras made it clear that there will be no further austerity measures and taxation should gradually be reduced to promote entrepreneurship – even talked about a single corporate tax rate at 15%. The premier and the two leaders of the opposition have said that the strength of the economy and society have been exhausted and new austerity measures create a risk of political destabilization.

Monday afternoon the troika heads had a meeting in the Finance ministry with Yannis Stournaras, Christos Staikouras, Evripidis Stylianidis and Yannis Vroutsis.

Stournaras briefed Samaras. Reportedly there was an agreement to adjust installments in insurance Funds and for the mobility in the public sector.