Troika return delay favors Athens

The Eurogroup meeting is expected to be intensely political. The updating of the memorandum is foreseen as being fraught with differences, both between Athens and the troika, as well as among troika reps, that can only be resolved politically, as measures demanded by lenders, simply, cannot be met. The path to the negotiations will be paved within the framework of the Greek presidency and the sideline meetings of Greek officials during the Eurogroup meeting.

The delay of the troika's return may actually work in Athens' favor, as the report on the troika compiled by the special European parliament committee set up to investigate the troikas and its dealings under parliament VP Othmar Karas, will arrive in Athens on 29, or 30 January.

The exact arrival date of the troika will depend on whether they wish, or not, to be here along with the europarliament committee under Mr Karas, which during a presentation of its findings on Thursday issued an announcement entitled “MEPs anticipate end of Troika.”

However, the Greek government doesn't seem to be in any hurry. Finance minister Yannis Stournaras, leaving the PM's office, on Friday, after briefing Mr Samaras on the budget and the Eurogroup meeting told reporters that he was not at all worried about a belated troika arrival to Athens, as “we are also seeking to delay it a bit so that we have the final data from December, which we believe will be better than what we, or the troika, expected.”

At the same time the troika is maintaining a harsh stance on Greece and issues and disagreements remain, despite the fact that additional data requested by the lenders has already been sent by Athens. Finance ministry officials quoted in the financial press note that there are divergent views on extraordinary measures to close the funding gap for 2014, on how the property tax will be collected, and how much lower VAT for food services affects revenues. Thus, negotiations are continuing at a distance.

The troika seems to want the Greek state to cover the 2014 fiscal gap with measures that will bring in 1.2 billion euros. These will include long terms actions as well as extraordinary intermediate measures. Finance ministry officials believe and reiterate, to all quarters, that developments in the Greek economy are much better than initial forecasts, which they believe are beyond question. A few days ago, Mr Stournaras had pegged the additional measures requested by the troika at a round billion, for 2014.