Third Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece

[1][2] A Financial Times editorial on 22 February 2012 argued leaders had "proved themselves unable to settle on a solution that will not need to be revisited yet again", that at best the deal could only hope to remedy one part of the Greek disaster, namely the country's debilitated public finances, though it would not likely even do that.

[3] The Eurozone's latest plan did, at least, evince consistency with the currency block's previous behaviour: from the start, its approach has been a halfway house of resisting a sovereign default but not doing enough to remove the risk altogether.

The new government however immediately asked its creditors to be granted two extra years, extending the deadline from 2015 to 2017 before being required to be self-financed, with minor budget deficits fully covered by extraordinary income from the privatisation program.

In August 2013, Schäuble expressed his expectations that "there will have to be another (bailout) program in Greece", a remark drawing heavy criticisms by other members of the German governing coalition.

[7] However, soon thereafter the head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Klaus Regling added to Schäuble's remarks, telling the German business daily Handelsblatt that Greece might need a third bailout package as soon as in 2014.

In return, Greece will have to streamline the VAT system and broaden the tax base to increase revenue, reform the pension system, safeguard the full legal independence of ELSTAT, automatically cut public spending to get primary surpluses, reform justice with a view to accelerate the judicial process and reduce costs, implement all OECD toolkit I recommendations, modernise labour market legislation, modernise and strengthen the Greek administration, revoke the laws passed by the Tsipras government counter to the February 20 agreement—except for the one concerning the "humanitarian crisis"— or identify clear compensatory equivalents for the vested rights that were subsequently created (e.g. for the rehiring of fired public servants), recapitalize the banks, and privatize 50 billion of state assets.