Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos reiterated on Thursday that the still bailout-dependent country does not need a precautionary credit line after August, when the current adjustment program ends.
Nevertheless, in comments to an Athens television station (Alpha TV), he backed down slightly from very recent statements of “no supervision” by creditors after the third bailout concludes, saying instead that his leftist-rightist coalition government has an “expectation” that the period after August will result in a “change of supervision … which, gradually, becomes supervision more for (meeting) targets … and allows us a degree of freedom over how we’ll meet these targets…”
His partially revised assessment comes after several high-ranking EU officials and analysts repeatedly pointed to the continued supervision of the Greek economy and state finances after the third bailout ends, given that institutional European creditors – now primarily the ESM – have loaned the country tens of billions of euros in low-interest credit.
