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Unable to keep its campaign promise to put an end to the Troika, the Greek government announced that it would negotiate only with the institutions (θεσμοί, thesmoi in Greek), which are nothing else but the former Troika. Thus a new term was born, namely θεσμόικα (thesmoika)

The technical teams of the institutions will arrive in Athens tomorrow whereas today’s talks were held in Brussels and Paris and at different levels (not just at the political level, as was the case a month and a half ago, but at the technical level as well). In Athens, the representatives of the institutions will start from the Directorate General "Accounting", which they will visit in order to obtain information on the situation.

Today’s negotiations are scheduled for 03:00 pm, on a neutral territory in Brussels. A delegation composed of associates to Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis is there to meet with technocrats from the three institutions (the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission). This meeting marks the beginning of the technical specification and the final form of the full package of commitments regarding all measures that the Greek government proposes to implement in the next 100 days (i.e. until the end of the four-month bridging agreement that expires in June and prior to the third memorandum which is being prepared) to open the way for loosening the "noose around the neck" of the Greek economy.

Varoufakis’ team consists of George Houliarakis (chairman of the board of financial experts), Nikolaos Teoharakis (new chief secretary of fiscal policy), Elena Panariti (advisor to the Minister of Finance), Yiannis Margaris (assistant to Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis) and Stavroula Miliakou (Director General Budget of the Directorate General "Accounting").

There will be representatives of all institutions as well as heads of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

Meanwhile, the Greek Minister of Finance is again seeking support to resist the pressure from lenders. He is already in Paris where he is expected to meet today with his French counterpart Michel Sapen. Yesterday, however, the political negotiations worsened again due to the verbal attacks exchanged between the representatives of the Greek and German government, thus hampering the technical talks, although, as agreed at the Eurogroup meeting of 20 February, this is the only way to grant further economic aid to Greece.

The negative response of Athens

The double negotiations (at the political and technical level) are held in the shadow of yesterday's statements by Wolfgang Schaeuble that Athens is wasting time, as if it is unaware that it is idling away its precious time without any significant reason. Meanwhile, the statements and publications in foreign media, warning that there is a risk of the country becoming insolvent in the next one, two or three weeks of March, have become more frequent.

And this despite the fact that, during the Eurogroup meeting on 9 March, all partners officially confirmed once again their goodwill and political will to find a common ground for agreement, to the delight of the Greek government. However, the misunderstandings and exchange of remarks regarding the venue of the negotiations started the next day.

The Greek government has thus prevented the supervisors from arriving and it is now fighting to repel the attacks of Berlin in every possible way, saying "no" and hampering the three institutions that are preparing a visit to Athens of numerous teams of foreign auditors.

Nikos Pappas, however, State Minister and a close associate of Alexis Tsipras, preferred to respond to German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble instead of to his Dutch colleague Jeroen Dijsselbloem who had said that "if we are not welcome in Athens, talks will not start." Furthermore, Nikos Pappas openly accused Schaeuble, stating that he was responsible for the suffocating plan for Greece and calling him an instigator of political games and supporter of failed policies in Greece and Europe.

Blocking the visit of auditors

Asked by the Greek journalists in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington, all representatives of the three institutions responded until yesterday noon that delegates would arrive in Athens on Wednesday to collect data and to verify the actual state of the Greek economy a month and a half after the elections. However, this afternoon (at around four o’clock Greek time) all this was suddenly rejected.

The government defined the rashness of European partners to appoint auditors and to send them as soon as possible to verify the state of Greece’s economy as a challenge and as "unfair" (these were the words of a Greek senior official involved in the negotiations). It also insists that the talks with the lenders and the submission of information to them should take place on "a neutral terrain" unless the opposite is considered absolutely necessary and wants to keep the talks with the technical teams away from Athens in order for the already well-known past picture of the visits of foreign auditors to various ministries not to happen again before the cameras.

Yesterday, however, sources close to the Minister of Finance officially presented to the Greek journalists a different picture from Brussels, namely, that there was no problem with the talks with the lenders and that the negotiations on the technical level would start normally in the Belgian capital today, exactly as planned.

These statements did not correspond to the fact that became known in the late afternoon yesterday, namely that Yanis Varoufakis and his close collaborator George Houliarakis would leave Brussels together. As chairman of the council of economic experts, he is responsible for carrying out the technical negotiations, which are to show whether the new measures (which are already 10 in number) promised by the Greek government to its lenders will be sufficient in the current financial situation of Greece or if new measures will be required to supplement them.

In all cases, however, sources close to the government stated today that the negotiations, both political and technical, would be held in Brussels, "without excluding the likelihood of teams made up of representatives of the institutions visiting Greece in order to collect specific information." As stated by the same sources, "these teams, the visits of which will be coordinated with the Greek side, will include lower-ranking officials, and of course, they will establish contacts with similar officials from the Greek side."

With eyes turned to the European Central Bank

The aim of the Greek government is for the European Central Bank to approve at least a 3 billion euro increase in the limit of public debt through the issue of new government securities with a maturity of 4-13 weeks and the limit for lending to Greek banks from the Emergency Liquidity Assistance, as soon as it becomes clear that a reliable dialogue about the new measures has started. The Greek government also seeks to obtain in advance 50% of the frozen 7.2 billion euro that are allocated for the country or at least 1.9 billion euro that Athens wants the European Central Bank to immediately repay as they are profits derived from Greek bonds.

Auctions of bonds at increased interest of 2.7%

Today’s auction of three-month government bonds ended with an increased interest rate of around 2.7%. The interest rate reached 2.5% during the previous auction whereas the amount obtained today from the auction was 1.3 billion euro.