Financial Times
June 13, 2016
Greece is the only country in Europe that still remains under an adjustment programme. The Greek political system failed the country in the second half of the previous decade. Successive Greek governments promised to fix the tax collection system, uproot the deeply entrenched vested interests and implement ambitious reforms and privatisations. But, with few exceptions, they did not deliver.
At the same time, our European partners have yet to deliver on their commitment to provide further debt relief. They agreed to it in November 2012 and it should have occurred in 2014 after Greece achieved, with considerable pain, a primary surplus of €1.5bn in 2013. It never happened. The decision was delayed due to the domestic electoral cycle of various European countries. The same happened on May 24 this year when the eurogroup of finance ministers yet again postponed the relevant decision, to 2018, despite the fact that it explicitly recognised the need to keep the Greek government’s gross financing needs at manageable levels and the ratio of debt to gross domestic product at a declining trend.
It should be stressed that the eurogroup postponed the decision for debt relief in spite of the following: first, that the Greek government had honoured its commitments; and second, that current market interest rates are very favourable to debt relief decisions for both borrower and lenders. In addition, the threat of Grexit, used against Greece by a number of eurozone politicians whenever negotiations seemed to stall, weighed heavily on sentiment, further fuelling uncertainty and negatively affecting the economic and social climate in Greece.
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