Eurogroup shares ‘varying degrees of scepticism’ on Greek proposals

There exists “various degrees of scepticism” among the euro area finance ministers and “it’s not a simple hard line against or in favour” a Grexit, according to Malta’s Finance Minister Edward Scicluna.

Speaking to MaltaToday from Brussels ahead of the Eurogroup, Scicluna welcomed the Greek proposals as a basis for discussion but pointed out what he called “incongruence” between what the Greece is now proposing and what it had promised its electorate.

“The proposals are positive and are along the lines of what the institutions had always asked for,” he said. “But the problem we have to solve is that essentially it is incongruent: the proposals are what the citizens overwhelmingly voted against in the referendum.”

Greece’s prime minister Alexis Tsipras had called a referendum in Greece after the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund kept insisting that Greece must implement harsh measures for a bailout deal to be reached.

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis – whose approach to the talks put off the euro area ministers – was replaced by Oxford-educated Euclid Tsakalotos, following the No vote win. Tsakalotos was also the chief bailout negotiator for Greece.

“On the positive side there are the proposals themselves, a new minister who is more welcoming and the backing of the Greek parliament. But the programme is being proposed by a government elected on a platform that wouldn’t accept it.”

Scicluna added that, at the same time, the financial crisis in Greece was so bad that an ambitious programme was required.

He went on to add: “We have to see what sort of special monitoring programme we can put in place to follow the implementation of the measures step by step. The discussion will be on how to reach this sort of agreement … this is how I understand the situation if we want Greece to remain.”

The Maltese minister insisted that trying “to simplify” today’s meeting about euro area countries wanting Greece in or out of the zone was “misreading the situation”.

“There are various levels of sceptisim and it all depends on the outcome of the Eurogroup.”

Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy came down much harder on Greece arguing that the new agreement “will be worse than the previous one”.

“It is clear why doubts still persist,” Scicluna said. “We have a very strange situation involving a government that has put forward a reforms plan that is more ambitious than the packet it campaigned against only last week.”

He said re-establishing trust between Greece and its creditors will be the biggest issue on the table at this afternoon’s Eurogroup meeting. “I do not foresee problems of a technical nature since the cash-for-reforms plan put forward by the Greek government was largely a re-hash of the proposals which were on the table last week, before the Greek referendum.

‘‘Reaching a deal would very much depend on whether creditor countries were convinced the Greek government would deliver on its promises.”