Reduction of civil servants by cutting or freezing their salaries, raising the tax on heating fuel, eliminating loss-making public bodies and increasing privatizations. These are the key points of the 15 additional measures requested of Greece by its main international creditors, the IMF and the EU.
According to Greek media reports, these would be indispensable conditions for obtaining the next tranche of EU aid. This is 8 of the total 110 billion, which should arrive in Athens' coffers by October to avert the danger of default.
By today, the Executive must announce what measures it intends to adopt to meet the requests of the IMF and the European Union. This was reported by the financial site To Vima, which cites an internal e-mail to the Ministry of Finance as the source. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Papandreou yesterday canceled a visit to the US to preside over a Council of Ministers in view of the conference call to be held today between Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and the IMF and EU inspectors.
"If we want to avoid default, stabilize the situation, stay in the euro zone - said Venizelos - we have to take big strategic decisions". The minister then specified that today, after the conference call, the Council of Ministers will meet to announce the policy to be implemented.
