Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, named to the job this week, said the government also wanted parliament’s approval “to strengthen the country’s bargaining position, to achieve better terms in the agreement“.
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Fear continued to grip world financial markets, with Asian shares plunging on Wednesday morning and the euro hitting a five-week low of $1.0916 in New York trade on Tuesday. Following Sunday’s referendum the Greece and its membership i…
So Greece – in a “pre-chaos state”, reported by France’s finance minister – is choosing the depression it knows over the depression it doesn’t.
But they struck a more upbeat tone on Wednesday after Athens promised to start pension and tax reforms demanded by creditors in return for a three-year loan to drag its financial system back from the brink of collapse.
Many economists say that Greece’s debt burden, at nearly 180 percent of annual GDP, is unsustainable for a country its size.
Still, both sides say they want the same thing – to stop Greece from becoming the first country to crash out of the 16-year old currency.
In a formal request that was filled with vague promises but short on details, the Greek government pledged to “immediately implement a set of measures as early as the beginning of next week” – but did not specify what these were.
Italian premier Matteo Renzi told reporters that European Union leaders would hold a further summit Sunday to approve a plan to aid Greece if creditor institutions are satisfied in the meantime with a Greek loan application and reform commitments.
MONTAGNE: Germany is Greece’s biggest creditor.
“The realistic proposal from Greece will have to be matched by an equally realistic proposal on debt sustainability from the creditors“.
“The situation is really critical and unfortunately we can’t exclude this black scenario – I mean no agreement until Sunday”, Tusk said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wield the most power in granting Greece a third bailout package that is expected to be worth tens of billions of euros.
I have no doubt that this will affect all of Europe, also in the geo-political sense.
Tsipras said Greece’s troubles predated his arrival in office in January and condemned the “austerity experiment” his country has endured over the past five years that he blames for spiraling unemployment and poverty.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who had urged voters to reject the previous bailout, must now go to parliament to seek approval.
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. Moscovici said that is not now under discussion.
Tsipras heavily criticized former bailouts that turned Greece into an “austerity laboratory.” He argued that such experiments have not been successful and must thus be put to a halt. And it’s been terrible for the Greek people.
In Greece, meanwhile, people were struggling with an eighth day of limits on money withdrawals and shuttered banks.
Greek ministers had been accused of failing to present concrete proposals in Brussels.
And in unusually strong language, Christian Noyer told Europe-1 radio he predicted “riots” in Greece if no deal is reached.
“If a way isn’t found to allow the banks to reopen within days – and the European Central Bank simply maintaining Emergency Liquidity Assistance won’t come anywhere near to achieving that – the Greek economy will implode so that any bailout deal agreed this weekend will become irrelevant in weeks”, writes the BBC’s economics editor, Robert Peston.
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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker tempered expectations of a swift solution.
