Last push for ESPA projects
Development Minister Costis Hatzidakis met on Tuesday in Athens with the European Commission?s Task Force in Greece, led by Horst Reichenbach, and announced that projects funded by the Brussels-subsidized National Strategic Reference Framework (ESPA) that fail to absorb their funds by the end of the year will have their credit revoked.
Credit will also be cut in half for projects where the difference between the credit approved and the actual payment is more than 75 percent.
The announcement is aimed at spurring the projects to push for completion before the end of the year, as the target the country has according to its agreement with its creditors is for the absorption of 3.7 billion euros by year-end and appears particularly difficult to attain as no more than 1 billion euros have been absorbed with less than 10 weeks to go.
