Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos secured an outline agreement from the three political party leaders supporting his interim government on measures demanded by international creditors to release a 130 billion euro ($171 billion) financial rescue package.
The four men agreed in a five-hour meeting to make additional budget cuts this year equal to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to an e-mailed statement today from the premier’s office in Athens. The four also agreed on a framework for bank recapitalizations, for ensuring the viability of auxiliary pension funds and for measures to reduce wage and non-wage costs to boost competitiveness.
The accord marked a step forward in a series of tense negotiations in Athens this weekend. With the country’s stability at stake, Papademos is racing to clinch agreement on a plan that’s been in the works since July, with talks between international monitors and Greek officials running in parallel with discussions among the prime minister’s coalition members and Greece’s government and its private creditors.
Papademos will meet with the three party leaders again tomorrow to work out the details. Antonis Samaras, the head of the second-biggest party, New Democracy, indicated opposition to some of the measures which the so-called troika of international creditors have proposed.
Samaras’s Concerns
“They are asking us for greater recession, which the country can’t take,” Samaras said as he left the meeting with Papademos. “I will fight to avoid that,” he said.
Greece’s efforts to win a second bailout from international creditors have teetered in the balance over the past three days as negotiations in Athens failed to clinch an agreement. Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said yesterday the talks were “on razor’s edge.”
Facing a 14.5 billion-euro bond payment on March 20 and general elections as soon as April, Papademos must heed international demands for greater austerity to complete the talks on a second aid package in time. Open questions involve how much more aid Greece needs, how much more austerity is required, and how to involve the European Central Bank in the private-sector creditor debt swap.
EU and IMF officials want guarantees from Greek political leaders that they will stick after the coming general elections to pledges made now to receive financing.
To contact the reporters on this story: Marcus Bensasson in Athens at
mbensasson@bloomberg.net; Maria Petrakis in Athens at
mpetrakis@bloomberg.net Natalie Weeks in Athens at
nweeks2@bloomberg.net