Greece has vowed to stay in the eurozone “forever” and promised stronger budget action as the world waited for EU leaders to stop the debt crisis threatening global growth.
“Greece is and will for ever be a member of the eurozone,” Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told parliament after EU and IMF auditors agreed to resume work on whether to release rescue funds to avert Greek default next month.
“We will do anything, we will not place at risk the fate of the country and its place in the eurozone,” the minister said.
He said: “More measures are needed. We are negotiating not only the budgets for 2011 and 2012 but the entire mid-term (adjustment) program for 2013 and 2014.”
“The eurozone knows that the Greek problem will only be solved within the eurozone,” Venizelos said, speaking of a “war for our generation” that had to be won.
Auditors from the European Union said late on Tuesday that “good progress was made” and that “technical discussions will continue in Athens over the coming days.”
Venizelos paid tribute to the experts from the EU, European central Bank and International Monetary Fund, the so-called troika, which have imposed increasingly draconian budget measures on the Greek people.
He explained: “If there was no troika control we would have foundered fiscally … it is a matter of attitude, of ability, of administrative structure, of habit, of inertia”
“It is fortunate that we are under control because in this way we can achieve self-control,” Venizelos added.
The EU-IMF auditors will determine whether the EU and IMF release the next slice of rescue money, of 8 billion euros ($A10.73 billion) under a first bailout last year.
Greece needs the money to avert default next month which would pose serious dangers to the entire eurozone.
“The danger is that the (Greek) economy and the financial sector will stop operating, this could happen without our will, it could happen by mistake, because the EU and the eurozone in particular faces enormous political, institutional and economic problems,” Venizelos said.
The first bailout totalled 110 billion euros ($A147.6 billion).
Enactment of a second bailout agreed on July 21 this year depends in part on fulfilment of the initial conditions, but the second rescue of 159 billion euros ($A213.32 billion) is also held up by disagreements within the EU.
“There could be a delay, there could be a misfire, because we are depending on a particularly complex system,” Venizelos warned.
At a meeting in Poland at the weekend EU finance ministers decided to delay their judgment on releasing the 8 billion euros ($A10.73 billion) until early in October.
With the decision by the auditors to resume their work, suspended on September 2 amid signals they were strongly dissatisfied with Greek progress notably on privatisations, one cloud over the eurozone has lifted slightly.
Financial markets and governments around the world are on edge and calling for the EU to get a grip on the debt crisis which the IMF warned on Tuesday was one factor dragging the prospects for world growth sharply downwards.
