Europe showers Greece with praise over reforms

Eurogroup President Mario Centeno has praised the Greek people and government for the “tremendous effort” in implementing most of the reforms and actions required in the third review.

“The institutions reported that Greece has acted on all prior actions. It has been a tremendous effort by the Greek government, who is showing strong ownership of the programme,” he said in a press conference on the Eurogroup’s results.

Meanwhile French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire arriving in Brusells for Monday’s Eurogroup meeting said there is “good news” for Greece and also indications that the Eurozone was “not far from a final settlement on Greek debt.”

Monday’s Eurogroup meeting will focus on the disbursement of the next tranche of loans to Greece and the finance ministers will look at the prior actions completed by the Greek government over the past months.

“We must make every effort in the next months… to conclude this final settlement,” Le Maire added.

President Centeno confirmed that Greece had implemented all but two of the 110 prior actions required to complete the third review, and that both outstanding prior actions were outside of the control of the Greek government.

“I am confident that they can be cleared soon by the institutions,” he added, noting that the “ball is also now on our side [of the court].”

“National procedures will now be needed to approve the disbursement of 5.7 billion euros, once the institutions validate the completion of the pending prior actions,” he said.

“The Eurogroup will now turn to the next stages of the ESM programme and ensure that the reform agenda will outlive programme period. As I promised in the last Eurogroup, the technical work on debt relief measures has already started,” he said.

European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici also weighted in to praise Greece on completing ‘’99%” of agreed actions in the Greek programme and promised that everything possible will be done so that Greece will enter a new period of prosperity.