Tough negotiations for the tranche

Troika started the negotiations in a bad mood. "It's difficult," a senior official of the Finance Ministry said, as troika shows determination to impose its own agenda in the short time frame of two weeks the Greek government has to close the deal for the tranches of about 10 billion euros it expects from the EU.

From the first meeting troika tried to neutralize the "super weapon" of the primary surplus in 2013, pushing to transfer a large part of it in 2014 as a safety cushion. "We have great confidence for the primary surplus," a senior Finance Ministry member said yesterday, but nothing in his expressions reminded that the final amount of the surplus for 2013 may reach 1.5 or 2 billion euros (instead of 812 million euros written in the budget and 100-300 million that troika accepts).

A little while later troika scolded Kostis Hadjidakis for the energy package offered to industries, causing him to exclaim, " a country cannot have a Ministry of Industry and no industries." On this issue there will be a new meeting today at the Energy Ministry.

The negotiation with the troika will continue with Labour Minister Yannis Vroutsi.

This time troika is not asking for privatizations or fiscal collection measures for 2014, but raises issues for structural changes. It wants to implement all the OECD measures and immediately.

For all these reasons, but also for the future of banks, the first round of negotiations will last until Thursday and the final meeting with Stournaras or Samaras will come from Friday onwards.