The astounding inability of European leaders to agree on a decisive solution to the Greek problem is hardly the example the Greeks themselves need as they set about the Herculean task of balancing the country’s books.

That said, Athens has taken a first step with the recent appointment of a head of the privatisation agency in charge of selling assets to chip away at the country’s mountainous public debt. It hopes to raise €50bn by 2015. This will not resolve the problem, but it will be a start.

Yet as the brave Costas Mitropoulos settles into his new job it looks like colleagues elsewhere in government may be about to trip him up. The threat comes in the form of the renewal of spectrum concessions for two of the country’s three mobile operators; Wind Hellas, the number three player, and Vodafone, the number two.