Greece Sets Up Committee to Investigate Bailout

Greek lawmakers voted on Tuesday in favor of setting up a committee to examine the circumstances under which Greece agreed to bailouts totaling 240 billion euros ($260 billion) with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Relations are tense between Athens and its creditors, on whom it depends for money to stay afloat. Greece, which has not received any bailout funds since last August, is fast running out of cash and struggling to strike a deal on reforms needed to unblock that aid.

“After five years of parliamentary silence on the major issues that caused the bailout catastrophe, today we commence a procedure that will give answers to the questions concerning the Greek people,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told lawmakers before the vote in the early hours of Tuesday.

The committee, proposed by Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party and its coalition partner, the right-wing Independent Greeks, will look into how Greece entered the agreements and any other issue relating to the bailouts and their implementation.

This includes the revision of the 2009 budget deficit, whose wildly gyrating figures triggered the country’s fiscal crisis, a debt restructuring in 2012 and the recapitalisation of the country’s banks.

The proposal was approved with 156 of the 250 lawmakers present voting in favor, 72 against and 22 abstaining.

via Reuters

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