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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-12-12Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>CONTENTS
[01] Labour reforms, fiscal gap the main issues in talks between government, institutions, says EC sourceBRUSSELS (ANA/C. Vasilaki) - Labour reform issues and the fiscal gap in 2018 will be the focus of the meetings between the Greek government and the heads of institutions who will return to Athens on Tuesday for talks on Greece's second program review, a European Commission official said on Monday.According to the source, the institutions will also want to discuss the announcements made by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the one-off benefit for low-income pensioners and the suspension of the VAT for the islands. The aim of the mission will be to achieve a staff-level agreement on the completion of the second review which will not include the issue of primary surplus targets after 2018, the same official said, adding that this is the clear position of the European Commission which is trying to disconnect the review from the ongoing talks on how many years will Greece have to maintain a primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP. This aim always "stumbled" on the IMF's intransigence, the official continued, however the fact that the IMF will participate in the mission has created positive expectations in Brussels. "It remains to be seen if it will arrive with a constructive mood," the source said. [02] New Democracy will win if elections are held in 2017, Mitsotakis says"If this government is a problem, then [an] election is a solution," main opposition New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an article published by the magazine "Newsweek" on Monday, saying he was confident that ND will win an election if they are held in 2017. Whereas centrists in Europe were in retreat, Mitsotakis said, Greece has had its "populist moment" and the pendulum was about to swing the other way, bringing a "straight-talking pragmatist" to power.SYRIZA won the elections in 2015 because it had promised to negotiate with the country's creditors to write off at least part of the country's debt and increase public spending, ND's leader added, offering "easy and convenient solutions to difficult problems". Asked whether it might not be better to let the government carry on with the reform programme agreed with Greece's creditors, rather than risk instability with an early election, Mitsotakis said the problem was that the government did not "own the reform agenda". "There's still significant internal infighting among various ministers every time we try to do a privatisation or every time we try to support entrepreneurship and private wealth creation," he said. In the wake of Donald Trump's election in the United States and as the political centre was collapsing in Europe, Mitsotakis told "Newsweek" he is "happy to call himself a centrist and a reformer" and believes that moderates preparing for battles with populists elsewhere can look to Greece as an example. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article |
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