DW — The first audit of Greece’s structural changes had barely concluded when it was announced that international creditors would arrive in Athens on Monday to take an even closer look at the country’s progress on imposing their austerity and privatization agenda . Offering 86 billion euros, Greece’s third credit package since 2010 requires budget cuts.
The upcoming second audit will be decisive: In return for credit, Greece will be required to, among other things, change labour laws, introduce tough rules for dealing with bad loans and present a budget for the next three years. Creditors insist on guiding a total of 33 austerity measures.
So far, Greece has been slow to implement the cuts. But now things cannot move quickly enough for the governing Syriza party, which was elected on an anti-austerity platform in 2015. Officials have expressed their intent to finalize all cuts by the time EU finance ministers hold their last meeting of this year, on December 5.
A lot is riding in Athens on the closely watched fight over the role that the International Monetary Fund will play down the line. The IMF has declared that Greece’s debt is unsustainable. It has made its own participation in the credit program contingent upon debt relief. Individual EU member states, Germany chief among them, object to such calls. And so the IMF’s future role remains unclear, though special status as a non-lending participant in Greece’s credit plan is a conceivable option.
But the IMF’s participation would also have a downside for Greece. The IMF has been especially insistent that Greece loosen its regulations on protection against dismissal in order to increase turnover., but Labour Minister Giorgos Katrougalos intends to wait for the European Court of Justice to decide on protection against dismissal before consenting to such changes. It is unclear whether the court will hand down a decision on the issue before year’s end.
