Eurozone insists no Greek rescue without reforms

Page last updated at 07:31 GMT, Sunday, February 5, 2012 - 12:31 EST

Today's Zaman:

Greece’s Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos leaves his office in Athens while issues related to labour reform and spending...

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Eurozone finance ministers told Greece it could not go ahead with an agreed deal to restructure privately held debt until it guaranteed to implement reforms to secure a second financing package from the eurozone and the IMF.

Eurozone ministers had hoped to meet on Monday to finalize the second Greek bailout, which has to be in place by mid-March if Athens is to avoid a chaotic default, but the meeting was postponed because of Greek reluctance to commit to reforms. Instead, the ministers held a conference call on Saturday to take stock of progress on the second financing package, which eurozone leaders set at 130 billion euros back in October. “There was a very clear message that was conveyed from all participants of the teleconference ... to the Greeks that enough is enough,” one eurozone official said. “There is a great sense of frustration that they are dragging their feet. “They should get their act together and start talking honestly, decisively and speedily with the Troika on the aspects of the program that remain to be finalized - on fiscal and labor market reforms,” the official said. The Troika are the representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who have prepared a Greek debt sustainability analysis on which the second financing program will be based. “The main issue is the lack of reform, or prior action, in Greece,” a second eurozone official said. Eurozone ministers were also dissatisfied with Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos because they believed the minister was paying more attention to his position within his party ahead of the April elections than to talks about reforms.

“There is a great sense of frustration with Minister Venizelos, who is very hard to get hold of because he is very busy campaigning for the leadership of (the Greek party) PASOK, so he is not available to meet with Troika members,” the first official said.

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