Greece is planning to repay the loans from the first rescue package 10 years ahead of schedule, Greek National Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, while in Brussels to attend the Eurogroup and ECOFIN meetings.
The minister predicted that the bailout "should be completely behind us by 2031" and pointed out that Greece has already paid a part of its loans early and plans to repeat this in 2025. He noted that for his generation and the government "fiscal prudence is not a policy choice, fiscal prudence is a regime".
He pointed out that Greece was one of just six EU countries that had a headline surplus in 2024 and attributed this overperformance chiefly to the government's efforts to counter tax evasion.
"We plan to continue de-escalating our debt, we don't plan to pass the bill to the next generation," he added, saying that Greece aims to continue to generate primary surpluses and that the primary surplus in 2025 was projected to reach 3.2% of GDP.
Asked about the impact of U.S. tariffs, he noted that Athens was in favour of free trade, while adding that Greece, as a member-state of the European Union, will follow the common EU line with respect to the trade negotiations underway with the United States. "We want to lower the temperature in the room," he said.
Referring to defence spending, he spoke of a need for some exceptions in the new EU fiscal rules, especially in the current geopolitical environment, and the need for a degree of flexibility, while welcoming the current approach to defence spending in the EU. He pointed out that high defence spending was not so much a choice as a "geographic fate" for Greece, forcing it to focus and invest in this for several generations.