A crucial Eurogroup meeting is expected to take place in Brussels today regarding the Greek bailout program. The meeting is expected to complete the first evaluation of the Greek compliance to the bailout terms that were agreed almost a year thus giving the green light for the next cash installment to the Greek state from its creditors. It is not expected that a Greek debt relief will be decided
During their meeting on the side of the UN summit in Istanbul, the Greek prime minister and the German chancellor noted their optimism on the outcome of today's Eurogroup.
A positive statement was expected to come out of the EuroWorkingGroup which took place on Monday night. The meeting of the Eurozone deputy finance ministers is customarily held in preparation of a Eurogroup between Finance Ministers.
The EwG was expected to ascertain that the institutions and Greece had reached an agreement on a technical level. At the same time the European Commission was expected to submit the draft of a compliance report. Until late Monday night, no such statement had been issued but this is not something that is seen as an ominous sign as the EwG is a preparatory meeting before the Eurogroup.
The Commission did submit a compliance report that proposed the instalment of an 11 bn euro loan tranche towards Greece. 7.2 bn are expected to go towards the payment of the national debt while 3.8bn will be distributed towards the payment of public debts. What information has been known from the EwG meeting leads to the assumption that the final amount will be around 10bn euro.
At the end of the long EwG, a Eurozone official noted that no agreement had been reached with the IMF. The same person claimed that the deputy ministers did form an agreement draft but this does not have the agreement of the Fund; “nothing has been agreed yet”.
A day before the Eurogroup, the IMF published a report, insisting that the payments due to be paid be Greece should enjoy a substantial re-profiling both in terms of time schedule and interest rates.