Parliament will not vote on loan extension, says government
The government confirmed on Monday that it would not submit to Parliament the four-month extension of the country’s loan agreement.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s office said there is no legal requirement to get Parliament’s backing for the extension but said that the premier is committed to getting MPs support for any agreement that is reached at the end of the four-month period.
Earlier, SYRIZA’s parliamentary spokesman Konstantinos Fylis said that MPs would have a chance to debate the extension but not vote for it. He stressed, though, that there would be votes on all the legislation derived from the government’s agreement with its creditors.
“The prime minister is determined to have a discussion on this… we are not afraid of dialogue,” said government spokesman Gavriil Sakellaridis.
“There reason that the government chooses at this time not to bring the agreement to Parliament for approval has to do with the fact that it is just the extension of an already existing loan agreement,” he added.
Sakellaridis also insisted that the government would not have any trouble meeting its financial obligations, including a 1.5-billion-euro International Monetary Fund repayment, this month.
“The public should not be concerned,” he said. “The Greek government has been looking for solutions to ensure there are no problems in paying the IMF and the other financial commitments we have in March.”
