Anxiety about EU decisions

All eyes are turned towards the meeting of finance ministers of the Eurogroup, which will be chaired by Jean-Claude Juncker and is expected to start at 16.30 Greek local time (15.30 local Brussels time).

Greece will be represented by PM Lucas Papademos, Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos and other members of the Greek negotiating team, such as the president of the Council of Economic Advisers George Zanias.

The Greek team will face the 16 finance ministers of other member-states of the Eurozone, as well as the EC commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Olli Rehn.

The finance ministers of Belgium Steven Vanakere, Germany Wolfgang Schäuble, Estonia Jürgen Ligi, Spain Luis de Guindos, France Francois Baroin, Ireland Michael Noonan, Italy Mario Monti, Cyprus Kikis Kazamias, Luxembourg Luc Frieden, Malta Tonio Fenech, Netherlands Jan Kees de Jager, Austria Maria Fekter, Portugal Vítor Gaspar, Slovenia Janez Sustersic, Slovakia Ivan Mikloš and Finland Jutta Urpilainen, will decide whether to approve the disbursement of the loan of 130 billion euros, which will attempt to reduce the public debt of Greece to 120% of the Greek GDP by 2020.

Before the meeting, the French Finance minister pointed out that there exist all the elements for an agreement while earlier, a source from the German Finance ministry, citing AFP, said that the "German government is increasingly optimistic" about reaching an agreement in today's Eurogroup to disburse the aid package of 130 billion euros.

Evangelos Venizelos said that "Greece is coming to today's eurogroup meeting having fulfilled all the necessary conditions for the approval of the new program, a key aspect of which is the PSI, under the decision of the European Council of 26-27.10.2011. Today we expect to conclude a long period of uncertainty that did not benefit either the Greek side or the economy of the Eurozone."

Meanwhile, there are reports that the IMF believes the Greek debt will reach 129% of the GDP in 2020, which is considered an unsustainable percentage.
 
According to U.S. newspaper the Wall Street Journal, the Eurozone finance ministers will now get their hands on an IMF report proposing 4 measures to reduce the Greek debt to the rate of 120%.
 
IMF officials suggest the recapitalization of the amounts saved by the Greek PSI to reduce the Greek debt by a further 1.5%, further reduction of agreed interest rates to provide the first loan of 110 billion euros and participation of European central banks in the restructuring of the Greek debt by a haircut on the bonds they are holding, which are estimated at 12 billion euros, but with the ECB returning the profit from the successive buyouts of Greek bonds, estimated at 50 billion euros.