As the Greek government frets whether it can meet demands from international lenders to pare the workforce by 40,000 over the next two years, envoys from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) are back in Athens to check progress on reforms
The review will determine whether Greece gets its next installment of 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) from a $173 billion bailout, its second, but the lenders have always relented and provided the money even when the government has failed to meet fiscal targets.
First on the agenda is a review of long-delayed promises from the Greek side to complete so-called “prior actions,” which are really inactions because they haven’t been done. Skeptics have said that all Greece needs to do is keep promising to make reforms and then delay them and repeat the process each time the Troika visits.
Still pending, and critical now the Troika said, are the mandatory transfers of 12,500 civil servants as part of plans to overhaul civil services, the presentation of a scheme to restructure state defense companies by 2014, and the update of restructuring plans of the banking sector and changes in the taxation system.
Greek officials said they were optimistic they would meet the goals they haven’t yet met.
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