The Parliamentary Budget Office characterizes as overly optimistic the Primary Surplus targets of the Medium Term Plan for the next four years, stressing the need “to revise the primary surplus targets downwards”.

Essentially questioning the key points of the Government’s “success story”, the report’s authors point out that the achievement of a primary surplus in 2013 and Greece’s exit to the markets “do not mark the definitive end of a long and full of obstacles road”.

At the same time, the opposition party is also indirectly accused of limiting the public debate to a “misleading dilemma: Memorandum or No more Memoranda”.

More specifically, the quarterly report (January to March 2014) states that the targets of the Medium Term “although moderated for the period 2014 – 2015 are overly optimistic, especially for the period 2016-2018”. The report explains that primary surpluses are achieved either by further reducing wasteful spending in the public sector or by increasing tax revenue.

It is stressed however that “government spending is almost impossible to be further reduced without adverse consequences” and that “due to the current decline in incomes and the continuing redesigning of the tax system, an optimistic forecast for rapid growth of revenues and limiting of tax evasion is impossible”!

The authors of the report point out that talks on debt relief should begin as soon as possible, claiming that “the situation in Europe is favorable, as the initial choices regarding financial management and debt are being reviewed”.