Ministers urged to wrap up pending prior actions

Ahead of next week’s visit by Greece’s creditors to Athens, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has repeated the call he made to his ministers at Easter to pull their socks up and accelerate the process to wrap up the pending prior actions of the Greek bailout program.

So far, only five of the 88 prior actions have reportedly been completed and, according to sources, the government is dismayed at the perceived unwillingness of ministers to follow through on the country’s commitments so that it can complete the fourth and final program review on time and stay on course for an August exit from the Greek program.

With regard to the bailout commitment to evaluate public sector workers by June, Tsipras has reportedly asked Dimitris Liakos, the deputy minister to the prime minister, to send a strong-worded letter to pressure ministers involved in the process.

Meanwhile Thursday, the online platform to evaluate the performance of civil servants in 2017 was activated. The beginning of the evaluation process will be announced via a ministerial decision.

However, despite the delays, the prime minister’s office insisted yesterday that Greece remains on track to exit the program in the summer and that the government is aiming for a staff-level agreement by the next Eurogroup on May 24.

The PM’s office is also confident that, as long as most of the prior actions are implemented on time, a comprehensive deal with the creditors can be reached by the Eurogroup on June 21. Government officials have clarified that the creditors are in agreement that several prior actions will not be implemented on time but will be deferred to a later date.