The “troika” in Athens by “Sunday night” – Le Figaro

Senior representatives of the creditors of Greece, EU, ECB and IMF, are expected to arrive in Athens “by Sunday evening” to resume next week discussions with Greek officials on a new loan to the country, said Saturday a source of the Greek Ministry of Finance. An official of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should also get to Athens, told AFP that source who requested anonymity.

The discussions are aimed at finalizing the new three-year loan to the country over € 82 billion agreed on July 13 between Athens and the leaders of countries in the euro zone after a marathon meeting.

Athens and Brussels want this négocation lead by “the second half of August “. Greece, whose coffers are empty, must pay 3.19 billion euros to the ECB on August 20, then 1.5 billion to the IMF in September.

Friday, Athens has officially asked the IMF , new aid. Initially, the Greek government, led by the radical leftist party Syriza Alexis Tsipras, wanted to do without any new IMF aid plan, considered too strong supporter of rigor.

But Athens had had to back to Germany in particular, which wanted the IMF involved since 2010 in two successive bailouts of Greece, continue to participate in the Greek bailout. The creditor institutions of Greece awarded a clean bill Thursday in Athens after the vote of the first austerity measures passed by the Greek Parliament during last fortnight.

Since the outbreak of the crisis debt in 2010 and the two successive loans from the EU and IMF in the country, a total of about 240 billion euros, institutional representatives were conducting regular visits to Athens to assess the Greek accounts, a condition pay the installments of loans.

But there are more than a year that the EU officials, the ECB and the IMF, known as the “troika” and hated by the Greeks, had not come to the country, the negotiations between Greece and its creditors being entered a phase of stagnation under the previous government of Socialist coalition right.

The visits of heads of mission of creditors were relocated to Paris last September, ostensibly to limit protests from unions.