ATHENS – Okay. Actually, no. Or perhaps, see you tomorrow. Twenty-four hours non-stop, go to file my words, see vocabularies make no mistake the English translation, the ear to the phone to arrange the details with Brussels, were not used to anything. Yesterday morning when the Minister for Finance Yanis Varoufakis took letterhead with the symbol of the Hellenic Republic, and has put his signature under the application for extension of loans to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, was convinced he had done Bingo. The President of the Eurogroup, at least informally, had told him that everything was in place. Jean Claude Juncker, a number of the Commission, had reassured him: “There will still be sweating a bit ‘, but the road to the agreement is drawn,” his message.
But no. The dream of a few hours of respite went up in smoke in less than twenty minutes. Time to enjoy the ok to the letter of Dijsselbloem – which convened immediately the Eurogroup – a nd conciliatory statements dictated to agencies by Juncker. Then the torpedo Wolfgang Schaeuble reported the tug of war between Greece and creditors of the box on. Transforming Today in yet another psychodrama (probably not the last) and freezing Athens, where he had already left in real time a mini-trial to the government, guilty – as he said flatly former deputy Evangelis Venizelos – that he bent to blackmail Troika “accepting the memorandum that had promised to send in the archive.”
The irritation and surprise executive Hellenic are all in the two cold with thin stripes which was liquidated ” nein “in Berlin:” The Eurogroup now has only two choices: to say yes or no to our proposal. ” Although under the Parthenon already know that today, at best, there will come a “ni”. “The German resistance we had reckoned – tells tired and Room Caritatis one of the negotiators who drafted the final document -. Schaeuble, as we shall demonstrate at home that he had struggled to make fewer concessions possible. But no quote even before tomorrow’s meeting, it was really a cold shower. ”
The disappointment is double because the letter, in some way, is fruit of a joint work with the technicians Brussels to minimize the differences. “A first version less conciliatory, was ready Wednesday afternoon – says the source -. Then, after a confrontation with counterparts we took a day to soften the tone and point to an agreement quickly.”
The time, word of Varoufakis, “is what really needs to Greece.” The flight of capital from banks continues to accelerate and travels at the rate of about 300 million a day. The economy is stuck with industrial production plummeted by 8.9% in December. So the negotiators of SYRIZA have taken the road of compromise, despite knowing that they must pay a political cost on the domestic front. “If you read well our letter we understand how many concessions we made in Berlin,” they say. We no longer speak of cutting the debt, it is recognized in the substance (even if not in words) the role of the Troika renamed “institutions”. You agree to keep the budget in balance and to take decisions only with the okay of all parties.
In Germany it was not enough. “Imagine what he has not gone down – they say in Athens -. But if the idea was to let us sit at the table to accept the agreements signed by Samaras might as well not even let us vote.” The points of contention are clear: the goals of primary surplus (“we can not respect those of the Troika, would kill the country”), the use of the fund as ATMs salvabanche and above initiatives to combat the humanitarian crisis. Too ambiguous to pass the examination of the very strict German public opinion.
“At the table of the Eurogroup we will see who is and who is not with us,” they say in these hours to Koumoudourou, the seat of SYRIZA. Convinced that crunches in front of the hawks (even the vice-premier German Sigmar Gabriel, SPD, partially distanced from Schaeuble) will play in favor of Athens. Michel Sapin, the wavering Minister for Finance in Paris, has sided with the Parthenon yesterday asking “early agreement”. And Tsipras knows he can count on the support of Barack Obama that is not to transform the financial problem of Greece in a short circuit geopolitical, with the shadow of Russia Vladimir Putin in the background. The problem is that having discovered the cards on the table of negotiations, Tsipras has to start worrying about the friendly fire. Venizelos gave fire to the powder. But the twenty minutes between the publication of the letter to the Eurogroup and the intervention of a straight leg finance minister of Berlin were a way of th e cross for the government, accused by hundreds of people on social networks have made too many concessions denying the promises election. SYRIZA, for now, has held blow. The maximalist wing of the party, with fatigue, he kept his mouth shut. The bomb Schaeuble, from this point of view, was an assist to the premier. Allowing it to stave off the tummy ache household. “The game is now very delicate, must put his face all”, closes the negotiator before being allowed a few hours of sleep. And after the 50-minute phone call last night between Tsipras and Merkel, will be a face-off between the two of them, bet the optimists, to square the circle.
No comments:
Post a Comment