De EU vraagt het onmogelijke van Griekenland
Niet figuurlijk of bij wijze van spreken onmogelijk, maar letterlijk onmogelijk, aldus Clive Crook in Bloomberg View:
Suppose that Tsipras capitulated, and that he was able somehow to stay in power long enough to keep his promises — or that the successor government was reliably conservative on fiscal policy. Would this be sufficient to put Greek public finances on the path to sustainability? The sustainability of Greek debt, you may recall, is Europe’s main purpose in all this.
The answer is no, it wouldn’t — and my authority here is the International Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s main creditors and partner of the European Commission and European Central Bank in what used to be called the troika.
The fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, published an article on Sunday which said that for the new budget targets to achieve sustainability, significant new financing and debt relief would also be needed. But Europe won’t discuss debt relief until Greece has put its public finances on a sustainable footing.
The IMF says Greece can’t put its finances on a sustainable footing without more debt relief; Europe says it has to. That’s the agreed position of the creditors. Clear? […]
What Europe is demanding of Greece can’t be done […] And, according to the IMF, even if it could be done, it wouldn’t work. Aside from this, Europe’s position is eminently reasonable.
