Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 17-04-29

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PM Tsipras in Brussels for EU Council's meeting on Brexit

[02] Government team, institutions agree on positive/negative measures after program-gov't official

[01] PM Tsipras in Brussels for EU Council's meeting on Brexit

The meeting, scheduled at 13:30 (Athens time), will convene specifically to discuss article 50 and adopt the guidelines for the negotiations between the European Union and Britain.

Earlier (10:45), Tsipras participated in the preparatory session of the European Socialist Party.

The negotiating guidelines are structured on three main axes:

1. Ensuring the rights of European citizens living, studying and working in Great Britain and British citizens in the EU Member States. This issue is of particular interest to Greece, due to the presence of some 70,000 Greeks in Great Britain, And more than 40,000 Britons living or having immovable property in Greece.

2. The British budgetary obligations towards the EU budget.

3. Maintaining the achievements of the peace process in Ireland and the United Kingdom border movement regime with the Member States. This is mainly the Irish-Northern Ireland, Gibraltar-Spain border and, to a lesser extent, Cyprus and the British bases on the island.

Other issues relate to the jurisdiction of the EU Court in pending cases, the smooth operation of businesses and commercial activities, and the future EU-UK relationship.

In addition to the rights of Greek citizens living in Great Britain, the concern of the Greek Government is to safeguard the economic and commercial interests of the country and Greek businesses, particularly in the areas of exports of agricultural and other products to the United Kingdom and incoming tourism.

The Greek government succeeded in including a statement in the minutes of the Summit that the guidelines, negotiations and their results do not constitute any precedent for another EU act with third countries.

[02] Government team, institutions agree on positive/negative measures after program-gov't official

According to the official, the issue of pensions is "not technical, but has political aspects". The two sides agreed however on energy, education, health and the package of measures on taxation that includes the lowering of the income tax threshold. He said that there is also a "political issue" with the non-performing loans but didn't clarify the statement.

The two sides didn't discuss labour issues or the analysis of the 2016 primary surplus (what share of the surplus is permanent and recurring and what is a one-off, so that they can calculate the positive impact for 2017 and 2018), but the two issues will be discussed in a future meeting.

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