Greece has submitted a request to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) – an EU organisation set up to provide financial assistance for eurozone members – for a three-year loan programme.
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“But let’s be clear: this will be a long, hard road and the Greek government will have to play its part”, she warned.
According to Finland’s Finance Minister Alexander Stubb, the eurozone is not looking at bridge financing for Greece “at this stage”, Reuters said.
Without a deal, the country faces an nearly inevitable collapse of the banking system, and European leaders have warned Greece this is its last chance to remain in the euro.
Markets are holding up despite the apparent ultimatum, with many investors predicting a last-minute deal.
The lack of progress on Greece anxious stock markets in Europe, where the Stoxx 50 index of top companies was down 2.1% on Tuesday. Greece has had two bailouts from its European partners and the worldwide Monetary Fund since May, 2010, totaling 240 billion euros ($260 billion).
“We need to ensure the medium-term funding of our country with a development and growth program”, Tsipras told lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
The president “reiterated that it is in everyone’s interest that Greece and its creditors reach a mutually-acceptable agreement” to allow Greece to remain in eurozone, although the only way to do that is for all parties to agree on a package deal that will put Greece on the road to financial “sustainability”, Earnest said. “A deal absolutely must be found on Sunday because it will be too late after that and the consequences will be serious”, he told French radio, adding that “there could be riots… and chaos in the country”. The ECB has been providing emergency credit to the banks, but on Monday said it could not increase the amount offered because the banks’ collateral was weaker now, after the “no” vote.
The result sent a shocked Europe scrambling for a solution to keep Greece in the euro, but there was further alarm when Tsipras and his new finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos turned up in Brussels on Tuesday without any formal debt plan.
Noyer said it was “impossible” to re-open the banks while confidence was so low because there would be an “immediate run” on tellers. A few called for compromise.
The head of a conservative group in the Parliament, Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt, said he was “furious” at Tsipras’ failure to spell out specifics of his reform plans to date.
In Greece, meanwhile, people were struggling with an eighth day of limits on money withdrawals and closed banks.
Mr Tsipras acknowledged his radical government’s share of responsibility for what had gone wrong in its five-and-a-half months in office but said the bulk of Greece’s problems lay in a failed austerity policy imposed over the last 5 and a half years of crisis. “An agreement which will bring about the credible and necessary reforms”, he said.
The Greek crisis has frayed the nerves of other European leaders, who have accused the Greek government, elected on promises to repeal austerity, of foot-dragging and exacerbating the situation.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Union’s executive Commission, indicated a comprehensive deal for Greece was unlikely to be reached Tuesday.
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[NEW YORK] The dollar rose against other major currencies except the yen on Tuesday, where it was unchanged, as debt-riddled Greece prepared bailout proposals to creditors ahead of a European Union summit.
