The Eurogroup was supposed to convene on the evening of 15 February last week via teleconference, with only one item on its agenda, the situation in Greece.

Luxembourg Prime Minister and Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker said last Tuesday (14 February) that Greece, following the largely positive vote in Parliament (199/300) on the new austerity package on 12 February, must still fulfil another two terms being insisted on by the Eurozone’s 17 finance ministers, namely the written reassurances from political leaders that the austerity measures will be applied after the next election and that further savings of €325 million have to be put in place in the 2012 budget, probably by cutting more off pensions.

In short, the Eurogroup was to be convened via teleconference only if Greece had followed  these further two conditions.

Athens was not al all happy with those extra conditions. For one thing the political leaders who back the Papademos government in Parliament, namely George Papandreou president of PASOK and Antonis Samaras leader of the centre-right New Democracy, had asked their parties at a great personal cost to support in Parliament during an episodic plenary on Sunday 12 February, a hugely unpopular new austerity plan, as a prerequisite for the country to receive the second bailout package from the troika of EU-ECB-IMF and avoid bankruptcy. Both leaders were forced after the vote to oust a round number of twenty deputies each, because they ignored the party’s instruction and rejected the austerity package. After that the two major parties in the country appear in limbo.

On that same night some hundreds meters from the parliament in central Athens, hooded youths burned down 47 buildings and looted 170 shops, turning the city into a battlefield, while tens of thousands of  demonstrators showed their resentment to the austerity package in a more peaceful way. It was a day that Greece will remember for years to come, because the parliament passed a law that was in sheer contradiction with the  sentiment of the entire Greek society. After all this pain and destruction in Athens, the Eurogroup also asked  that those two leaders  also reassure everybody that the austerity measures will be applied even after the next general election, expected to be held  in April. If this is not a humiliation for an entire country then words have lost their meaning.   

It should be remembered that Greece is set to receive from its Eurogroup peers and the IMF  a second aid package to avoid bankruptcy, which includes a 50% ‘haircut’ on the privately held debt and soft loans of €130bn to cover the country's financial needs until 2015.

For these ‘goodies’ to be released, however, the Eurozone and IMF have asked Athens to apply further highly unpopular austerity and structural measures.

The Eurogroup and IMF have set three conditions for Greece; first, that the Greek parliament must vote in favour of the new austerity plan, a demand that was already fulfilled on 12 February .

The remaining two terms have not yet been met, but the Greek government had said that it will try to do so by noon on 15 February. Even if Athens carries out all three terms as indicated, the Eurogroup was still only convened via teleconference, which meant that there was no formal decision in favour of Greece, even after the country had passed through fire and destruction to satisfy the creditors demands.

Instead, Juncker has said that the regular meeting of the Eurogroup, all 17 ministers present in person, is due to take place on Monday 20 February.

The truth is that the mastermind of all that package for Greece, that is the Berlin government, does not believe any more wholeheartedly that its ‘construction’ is going to work.