Representatives of Greece's creditor institutions will travel to Athens on Friday to hold formal negotiations on a new bailout, which are set to start now that the country's parliament has passed two reform bills, a Greek government official said Thursday, according to dpa. EU Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici announced on Wednesday that the negotiations had started, but face-to-face meetings between negotiators do not yet appear to have taken place. The Greek government official said negotiators hope to complete the bailout memorandum by August 18. The technical talks are expected to be completed around August 12. The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have traditionally conducted aid negotiations with Greece. Officials from the eurozone's bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, have recently also been involved. Early Thursday, the Greek parliament passed legislation reforming the judicial and banking sectors. The vote followed last week's approval of tax and pension reforms. All of the measures had been agreed to by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during a eurozone summit in Brussels, as conditions for beginning the formal bailout talks on up to 86 billion euros (94 billion dollars) in financing for Greece. Because of these developments, the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone was no longer an issue, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told Austrian radio Oe1, but added that this still depended on the efforts of Greece's politicians and people. "It's my assumption that a Grexit is now definitely out of the question," the chief of the EU executive said. To get the reform measures through a contentious political atmosphere at home, Tsipras had to contain a rebellion within his own SYRIZA party and enlist the help of opposition parties. Tsipras has faced sharp criticism for the passage of measures, the overturning of which was a central point of his electoral campaign. Conducting talks in Athens is only the most recent turnaround for the government from a position it held only a few months ago. In March, former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis pledged that "troika visits comprising cabals of technocrats" was a thing of the past. At the time, there were mixed signals out of Athens on whether experts from the commission, ECB and IMF would be welcomed back to Greece at all for bailout-related talks. After the vote, however, one of the main dissidents on the reform measures stressed that the SYRIZA party would remain united as the country goes into bailout negotiations. Parliamentary president Zoe Konstantopoulou, one of the government's most outspoken critics of late, said after a noon meeting with Tsipras that she and the prime minister were committed to the "coherence of the left and SYRIZA." Of the ruling SYRIZA party's 149 members, 31 voted against the reforms and five abstained. Last week, 32 lawmakers voted against the first set of measures, six abstained and one was absent. Varoufakis, who rejected the first set of measures, voted "yes" on Thursday. "In the early morning hours, the Greek Parliament took another important step towards implementing its commitments ... and rebuilding trust with Greece's international partners," a commission spokeswoman said in a statement. "The Greek authorities have legally implemented the second set of four measures agreed at the euro summit in a timely and overall satisfactory manner," she added, noting that bailout negotiations "should now progress as swiftly as possible." The German government also welcomed the vote outcome. The head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office said that it was a good start. If Greece honoured its promises under the planned bailout deal with its international creditors, one could expect a "longer period of pronounced calm" in the eurozone, Juncker said. The Greek government official said the decision to open the Greek stock market will be made next week. The Athens stock exchange has been closed since the introduction of capital controls on June 29.
