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The Greek government has sent the representatives of creditors in Brussels a new list of measures that will enable it to collect 4.7-6.1 billion euro, as it claims. In addition, Athens believes that their application will also enable it to attain a primary surplus of 3.9%, i.e. almost 1% more than stipulated in the Memorandum of financial assistance.

The measures include increase in taxes and in ticket prices for visits to museums and archaeological sites, full access of tax authorities to the tax and bank accounts of citizens and suspension of cash payments to government institutions. All citizens will be required to pay their bills with credit or debit cards.

At the same time, the Greek government intends to restore the 13th pension for certain categories of pensioners and the collective labour agreements. It also envisages a gradual increase in the minimum salary while the intention with regard to privatizations is not to implement them under a common legal framework but to consider each case separately.

It is significant that the list of measures has been announced not by the Greek cabinet but by the British financial magazine Financial Times. So far, Athens has neither confirmed nor denied that those are its reform proposals to the creditors.

The measures in question need to be adopted and approved by the Brussels group (formerly known as the supervisory Troika) to enable Greece to receive some funding in the coming days and, in all cases, before April 9, when it must repay part of the loan to the International Monetary Fund to the amount of 458 million euro.

Earlier today, Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis said the government was negotiating "till the blood comes" and in a tense atmosphere. He also stated that the creditors were applying "suffocating pressure" to force the Greek cabinet to adopt and implement the "disastrous policies" which the Greek negotiators were "fighting" to oppose.

At the same time, Varoufakis indirectly confirmed that the cabinet had actually proposed the measures presented by the Financial Times and defined as a "blow below the belt" the information leak to the international media despite the "confidentiality mode" imposed on the negotiations. He stressed that these leaks undermined not only Greece but also the whole of Europe.

According to Greek journalist Kostas Stoupas, a widespread opinion among opposition parties and the media is that the government had reached an agreement with the creditors and some time ago at that. However, it is slow in presenting it, in voting it in parliament and implementing it because it first has to put under control the internal opposition and to prepare society for it.

Indicative of the attitudes in SYRIZA regarding the agreement that the government signed on 20th February, thus committing itself to implement the reforms, are the statements of president of parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou.

Commenting on the progress of negotiations with the creditors, she said, "Some are trying to not allow the government to implement its programme" and on the agreement of 20 February, she stated, "It contains changes in the recently applied policy, but there are other problematic issues as well."
 
Asked whether in the event of a liquidity problem she would prefer the suspension of payments to creditors, Konstantopoulou replied that the government's priority was the survival of citizens, not the implementation of the will of those "who want us to kill society."

According to her, Greece’s geopolitical position was in its favour during the negotiations. Parallel to this, however, she pointed out that the Greeks’ benefits from joining the euro zone were controversial. "I'm not ready to lose a single person for a specific currency," was Konstantopoulou’s answer to the question as to whether the euro was a fetish for her.