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Greece in new reform pledge to Europe by Danny Kemp with Alex Pigman AFP, March 20 Brussels - Greece agreed Friday to give creditors a new list of reforms to get its bailout back on track after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras held crunch talks with European leaders. They agreed to finish work "as fast as possible" on completing Greece's EU-IMF rescue programme, a statement said, to free up crucial funds to help Athens avoid bankruptcy and a catastrophic exit from the euro. The radical left-wing Greek leader sat down for a three-hour meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Francois Hollande and the EU's top officials on the sidelines of a summit in Brussels. "We have put the process back on track," a tired-looking Tsipras told reporters after the talks. Merkel -- who as leader of Europe's biggest economy has led efforts to make Greece honour its commitments -- said she and Hollande were "fully in line" with the agreement. "The Greek prime minister declared that he is willing to present such a list and that he will do so quickly," she told a press conference. Greece's creditors agreed in February to extend its $240-billion-euro ($255 billion) bailout in exchange for promises of austerity reforms by Tsipras's new hard-left government. Athens wants the final seven-billion-euro tranche of the money to be paid out now to stay afloat, but Brussels wants more evidence of its commitment to the reforms. Time was running out for Athens as Friday brings a key debt deadline when Greece must pay 300 million euros to the IMF and redeem 1.6 billion euros in treasury bills. "Greek authorities will have the ownership of the reforms and will present a full list of specific reforms in the next days," said the statement issued after the talks. Hollande urged Greece "to be more precise in its reform proposals and introduce them faster than planned." Technical talks in Athens and Brussels which had largely stalled over the seemingly insurmountable differences between the two sides will continue as before, the statement added. . . . <http://news.yahoo.com/greece-submit-reform-list-within-days-021958983.html> Tsipras’ economic policy architect resigns [Yannis or Giannis or 'John' Milios] by Eric Maurice euobserver BRUSSELS, March 19 Giannis Milios, a member of Syriza’s central committee and long time economic advisor to Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, resigned Wednesday (18 March), on the eve of a crucial EU meeting in Brussels. "Economic department, farewell. With gratitude for the regards, the comradeship and trust," Milios wrote on his Twitter account, giving no further explanation. A professor of economic policy who defines himself as a Marxist, Milios is considered one of the most loyal members of the left-wing party. His resignation is being seen a sign of a rift inside Syriza and the government about the deal Tsipras will try to broker with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday and in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday (23 March). Greece is currently locked in a political tussle with its euro partners over what reforms it needs to undertake in return for the next tranche of bailout money being released. During the last election campaign, Milios suggested that Greece will not meet its debt repayment if a Syria government did not find an agreement with Greece’s Eurozone partners. Early March, he co-wrote with two other Syriza economists a very critical analysis of the 20 February agreement with the Eurogroup. "It is clear that the new agreement is a truce, but truce is by no means a tie. The agreement is a first step on slippery ground," wrote Milios in the piece, whose title was "Syriza’s only choice: a radical leap forward". "The question that remains open is whether the government will insist on superficially presenting the result of the negotiation as a 'victory', disregarding all the critical issues that emerged, or will attempt to analyse in depth the conditions and the consequences of the retreat as long as there is still time," added the analysis. Milios and the other two economists then advised the government to "bring back [instead] on the agenda our programmatic commitments to redistribute income and power in favour of labour, to re-found the welfare state, for democracy and participation in decision-making." Milios announced his resignation hours after the Greek parliament voted in a so-called humanitarian crisis bill providing free electricity and food stamps to the poorest people. He had been a strong advocate of the bill, which prompted a negative reaction from the European commission technical team in Greece. <https://euobserver.com/beyond-brussels/128072> Milios resigns SYRIZA Economic Policy Department by E.Tsiliopoulos New Greek TV news/English March 19 Yannis Milios notified his resignation from the Economic Policy Department of SYRIZA with a post on Twitter in which he wrote: "Department of Economic Policy, farewell. With gratitude for the appreciation, companionship, trust." Yannis Milios was already very annoyed because he considered that the party leadership did not help him out in last year's MEP elections. Also, according to persons close to him, he had gotten assurances from Alexis Tsipras, that he would be placed Commissioner of the European Commission. Something, however, that Mr. Tsipras for reasons of a broader political balance preferred to turn into a center-right choice. The third bitterness Milios endured was that he was nominated for the leading organ of the party, the Political Secretariat, for which the president of SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras proposed new cadres. However, apart from his personal bitterness, the initiator of the economic program of SYRIZA, Milios saw other strategies were being followed. On the one hand, the support towards Yanis Varoufakis, but he was also annoyed by the "coverage" that exists from the leadership of the party to Mr. Lapavitsas who is a fan of a return to the drachma. <http://www.newgreektv.com/index.php/greece/item/14724-milios-resigns-syriza-economic-policy-department> _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
