photo www.kathimerini.gr
In a publication, the US Bloomberg agency talks about winners and losers in the Eurogroup negotiations. The Eurozone finance ministers are the ‘big winner’, which incidentally was expected, taking into account the fact that Greece stood against 18 ‘opponents’.
"In an 18 against 1 negotiation, it was always likely that the 18 (the Eurogroup) were going to come off better than the 1 (Greece)," says the publication and lists the benefits gained by each party.
- The Eurogroup gets to keep European Union, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund—"the troika"—oversight of the programme extension. Greece gets to have everyone not call it the troika anymore.
- The Eurogroup has Greece's agreement on an extension of the existing bailout programme. Greece has Eurogroup agreement not to call it a programme anymore.
- The Eurogroup gives Greece until Monday to come up with a set of budgetary measures that will allow a successful review of the programme extension. Greece gets to pick its own austerity. (And eventually it may get flexibility on reducing its primary budget surplus.)
- The Eurogroup gets to ringfence the EFSF (European Financial Stability Fund) money in the HFSF (Hellenic Financial Stability Fund) buffer so it is available only for bank recapitalization at the discretion of the ECB. Greece gets to watch this happen.
- The Eurogroup gets to have a quiet weekend. Greece gets to work really hard on a set of measures that the troika institutions must approve by Monday evening.
All this might make it sound like Greece got very little out of the Eurogroup today, and in many ways that seems true. But Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's finance minister, will be able to go back to Greece and say he has got all he could. He allowed the negotiations to get to the 11th hour to maximize his leverage, and he did enough to be able to say he fought Greece's corner hard.
For the moment, that may be enough in a country that has been feeling quite knocked around by its Eurogroup partners.