By N. Bellos
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European creditors are reportedly lukewarm to the prospect of another “holiday bonus” that the Tsipras government wants to extend to roughly one million beneficiaries come December, EU sources said in Brussels this week.
Nevertheless, the same sources said EU and Eurozone leaderships are open to discussing such a prospect, but warned that last December’s “abrupt” announcement will not be welcomed.
The reaction comes in the wake of a top Greek minister’s statement this week that the government wants to doll out 1,000 euros each to one million people in the country, probably in December. Last year’s “holiday bonus” saw 617 million euros distributed to nearly 1.2 million pensioners in the country of roughly 11 million residents. The only criteria at the time was for a pensioner to receive less than 800 euros per month in benefits, regardless of assets or other means. Several MPs in Parliament, in fact, received such a benefit, as they were recorded as receiving less than 800 euros a month in social security, on top of their salaries as serving deputies.
The same sources said that a target of concluding the third review of the ongoing bailout is realistic, but in any case, it must be finished by no later than February 2018, along with the disbursements of subsequent loan tranches. The timetable should be strictly adhered to in order to conclude the fourth and last review of the bailout, which ends in August 2018.
The leftist-rightist coalition government in Athens must meet increasingly ambitious fiscal targets on an annual basis, conclude reviews of the third and last review of the program and also maneuver between the IMF and European creditors in order to achieve some sort of immediate debt relief – which the Fund has repeatedly requested, but which European creditors have so far avoided.
