“It’s back to school for the Greek government as it tries to show it is leaving the chaos of its crippling debt and economic crisis behind and can now stand on its own feet,” CNBC reports. At its meeting with the Troika that manage Greece’s 240-billion-euro bailout program, Athens will argue that this year Greece wants to move away from austerity and towards more growth-oriented policies. “The ultimate target is to ‘graduate’ successfully from the bailout program when it ends in 2016 without further assistance – just as Ireland and Portugal did this year,” CNBC adds. Symbolic of this strategy is the location of today’s meeting to kick off Greece’s fifth review of the lending program: Paris, instead of the traditional venue of Athens. Finance Ministry sources told CNBC that the Greek government asked for the meeting to take place in Paris as part of its communication strategy but stressed that the shift does not mean the government will not fulfill its obligations to the Troika. After this fifth review is successfully concluded, Greece will try to get some relief on its bailout loan repayments. But Greece has to show that the program is still on track and the country has implemented much-needed economic and political reforms. “Greece has made considerable progress toward eliminating the fiscal and external deficits, but is not yet out of the woods. The fiscal surplus achieved last year (0.7% of economic output) falls short of the 4.5% needed to achieve debt sustainability, while structural reforms are still in their infancy,” Miranda Xafa, President of EP Consulting told CNBC.
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