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Yannis Stournaras, Greece’s finance minister, will on Monday (5 May) ask his fellow eurozone finance ministers to ease the terms of Greece’s €240 billion bail-out after it met a key target set by the Eurogroup. The confirmation that Greece ran a primary budget surplus in 2013 came after the country’s successful return to international markets in early April, when it raised €3bn.

Further good news for Stournaras came on Monday (28 April) when Greece received €6.3bn in bail-out loans, some of which had been held up since late 2013 because of strong disagreements between the government and its international lenders. The primary budget surplus, which excludes interest payments on its debt and one-off payments to prop up the country’s bank sector, triggers a commitment by Eurozone finance ministers in November 2012; they agreed to take measures to reduce Greece’s overall debt burden once the government had achieved a primary budget surplus.

This could be done by reducing the interest rate charged on the bail-out loans or by diminishing the contributions Greece has to make in order to receive European Union structural funds, according to a Eurogroup statement from the time. The aim would be to help Greece reduce its public debt to “substantially lower” than 110% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2022, a goal set by Greece’s international creditors – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

But a report published by the European Commission on Friday (25 April) cast strong doubts over Greece’s debt sustainability. It predicted that Greek public debt, which currently stands at 177% of GDP, will fall to 125% of GDP by 2020 and 112% by 2022, missing the headline target. The report also forecast that Greece will face a budget shortfall of €12.6bn in 2015, including some €5.5 billion over the next twelve months.

Greece should be able to fund this shortfall until May 2015 by raising money on the international markets or by drawing on idle resources scattered across government accounts, according to the Commission. But it is silent on how Greece will finance its subsequent needs in 2015.

This raises the question of whether Greece will need a third bail-out, which would come with strict austerity and surveillance conditions, or whether Greece’s needs can be met through debt relief from other eurozone members.

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