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Anastasia Balezdrova

The expected resumption of the negotiations between the Greek government and the supervisory Troika remains under question. So far, there has been no official information as to whether the representatives of Greece’s lenders will arrive on Monday for the scheduled meetings with the Greek ministers.

The uncertainty is due to information from Reuters accoprding to which the visit of the members of the Troika to Athens could be postponed because of the differences regarding the estimates of Greece’s budget deficit in 2014. The international agency refers to sources from the euro zone, according to whom the supervisors and the Greek government have failed to agree on the way in which the hole of 2 billion euro will be filled.

Sources from the Greek Ministry of Finance argued over the past week that the deficit would be far below 2 billion euro. In particular, they pointed out that the hole in the budget for next year would not exceed 500 million euro.

The Greek government has not commented on the information disseminated by Reuters. The press office of the Ministry of Finance has even announced that the first meeting between Minister of Finance Yiannis Stournaras and the lenders’ representatives will take place on Tuesday. However, Greek media report that, by Wednesday evening, there had been a high probability of postponing the arrival of the Troika in Athens.

Sources claim that Yiannis Stournaras had requested from the head of Euroworking group, Thomas Wieser, information about the intentions of the supervisors. The result of the conversation between them was a common agreement that the members of the Troika should arrive in Athens, which would help avoid the risk of worsening the attitude towards Greece and would send the message that the monitoring would continue normally.

Sources close to the representatives of the lenders state that the decision has been taken "literally on the edge". Therefore, a new change in the plans is possible although these sources are almost certain that this will not happen. In the last few hours, German media have joined the media "war", arguing that the Troika will not arrive in Athens next week. For its part, Reuters, which has sowed the first seed of doubt regarding the visit, has published a clarification by the International Monetary Fund that its representative in the Troika, Paul Thomsen, will begin his meetings in Athens on Tuesday.

Regardless of the outcome, the game of "communication through intermediaries" indicates a problem that is most likely related to the Greek government’s failure to complete its commitments. For several weeks already, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos have been making statements that no new fiscal consolidation measures by reducing salaries and pensions, and imposing new taxes will be taken.

Analysts believe that the most likely outcome of the situation will be the signing of an agreement between the Troika and the government on the taking of such measures during the next visit scheduled for December.

At the same time, there has been discussion inside Greece that, probably, the government will again prefer the "easy" way of massively cutting the income of the citizens instead of making the now notorious structural reforms.

The comments on the social network Twitter are more than revealing:

"Mr. Stournaras wants equivalent measures again. Why should they be equivalent? Let him restore the duty on heating oil to its old value in order to increase revenues," wrote Stefanos Manos, former president of the liberal Drasi party and finance minister in the government of Constantine Mitsotakis (1990 - 1993).

"Stournaras calls for the adoption of equivalent measures in order to avoid the imposition of a tax on real estate. I guess that it does not occur to him that he can close a useless state institution."

"I hear that, again, you are going to take equivalent measures regarding the property tax. This will be the end. Cut salaries and pensions again just to check something."