EU gefrustreerd over nieuwe Griekse minister van financiën (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As EU leaders ready themselves to gather in Brussels amid perhaps the EU's worst existential crisis, fresh details of frustration at the new Greek finance minister have emerged.
The summit was originally to focus on the issue of migration amid unrest in north Africa and the Middle East, but all eyes are on Greece and the wider eurozone crisis even though the Athens drama is not officially on the schedule.
The summit comes bang in the middle of EU-IMF-ECB inspections in Greece and efforts by the newly minted Greek government to push through a €28 billion package of austerity measures and €50 billion in public asset sell-offs.
The troika arrives in Athens on Thursday to meet with the finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos - in his job less than a week - to discuss the upcoming 28 June vote in the Greek parliament on the austerity package, and to ensure that it matches eurozone demands.
EU finance ministers, assuming they like what they see in the Greek vote, will only give the go-ahead for the dispersal of the fifth tranche of bail-out cash on 3 July, during a specially convened meeting of EU economy chiefs.
Diplomats say the EU leaders will on Thursday be hard-pressed to take novel steps at this point in the timeline. The EU heads will at an informal dinner listen to a debrief by Greek Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou i and are expected to do little more than publish a joint statement aimed at instilling "calm and confidence".
But with financial markets watching for any sign of nerves or division, concerns are spreading that the new Greek finance minister could yet upset EU plans.
Venizelos, a former defence minister and long a critic of the memorandum of understanding between the EU-IMF-ECB troika and Greece, went to an EU finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg on 19 June - his EU debut - with a few too many ideas of his own.
Diplomatic sources told this website that Venizelos is keen to tweak the 28 June austerity package, provoking "frustration" among colleagues.
Papandreou's recent government reshuffle was designed to bring into the cabinet almost all of the critics of the memorandum in order to co-opt enemies. But in doing so, he appears to have to put centre stage a man who is unwilling to play along.
Describing Venizelos' Luxembourg intervention, one contact, who described the meeting as "bad-tempered", said: "He talked too much about what he wants to do, too much tweaking, and not enough [about] what they are going to do."
Venizelos' deputy, Pantelis Oikonomou, is also a potential loose cannon.
The head of the left-wing faction in the governing centre-left Pasok party, Oikonomou had until his absorption into the cabinet been the figurehead of an anti-troika poster campaign. The billboards reminded Greeks that Papandreou's father, Andreas Papandreou, was wont to say "Greece belongs to the Greeks."
"We remember and fight for a homeland independent and just," the poster continues, quoting Papandreou senior, the first Socialist prime minister of Greece after the fall of the rule of the military junta that ruled the country from 1967-74.
EU capitals, the IMF and the ECB are keen for the Greek government to lay aside politics and to get on with the technical job of implementing the austerity measures, at a time when Athens is fast running out of cash to run the organs of state, pay pensions and to service its gaping national debt.
With Greek trade unions threatening to cut off electricity in Greece on 28 June if the government goes ahead with privatisation of energy plants, the European Commission chief, Jose Manuel Barroso i, on Tuesday tried to sweeten the bitter pill.
Barroso said the EU will speed-up payment of €1 billion of structural funds previously committed to Greece in an effort to kick-start economic growth.
Sweetening the deal in the face of widespread popular opposition to austerity, European Commission chief on Tuesday offered the carrot of a billion euros in already committed EU funds for Greece, but frontloaded, in an effort to kick-start growth.
Diplomats say EU leaders are likely to embrace the idea on Thursday, as there is always some unspent cash floating about in the commission's coffers. But core eurozone capitals will be poring through the details of Barroso's proposal and looking to attach some further conditionality.
There are also concerns any such funding will take some time to filter through the Greek economy.
EU economy spokesman Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, speaking to EUobserver, said EU officials have their ways of injecting cash quickly if need be, however.
"We already have contacts between Athens and DG Regio [the commission's regional affairs department] on how to accelerate absorption," he said.
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