“Government has given everything and still sees no agreement” could depict the result of Poul Thomsen’s hard pressure against Euclidis Tsakalotos for a horizontal cut in main and supplementary pensions starting from 2018.
However this demand cannot be easily accepted, as in that case Greek government would be led to the elections of 2019 as a sacrificial lamb.
According to some information Tsipras would prefer the cuts to begin in 2020 and 2021 in order to go to a fourfold election (legislative election, European Parliament election, municipal and regional election) at spring of 2019 with the fewest possible damage for SYRIZA.
Thomsen initially demanded one-off reduction for the “old” pensions that had been approved until May 2016 while Tsakalotos and Houliarakis proposed that reduction should be done in two tranches, the first one in the beginning of 2019 and the second one in the beginning of 2020. This proposal was keeping 2018 clean of new measures, as Tsipras wanted, but the tough guy from IMF turned this argument on its head by accepting the two trenches but also by demanding the first one to take place in 2018.
Zois Tsolis
Abstract
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
