Greece hopes to conclude negotiations with creditors on bailout within days
Prime minister Alexis Tsipras warns Syriza’s dissenters that he will push for early elections in the autumn if they resist €86bn bailout measures
Greece hopes to conclude negotiations with international creditors by early on Tuesday at the latest, a Greek official said, as talks continued in Athens on a new multibillion-euro bailout.
Greece’s finance and economy ministers were locked in negotiations with representatives of creditors on Sunday. Greek officials have previously said they expect the bailout accord to go to the country’s parliament for approval by 18 August.
“Efforts are being made to conclude the negotiations. The horizon is by Monday night or early Tuesday,” said a Greek official, who declined to be named.
“When the new bailout comes to parliament for a vote it will be one bill with two articles – one article will be the loan agreement and the MoU [memorandum of understanding] and the second article will be the prior actions,” the official said, referring to measures Greece needs to take for the bailout accord to take effect.
The negotiations began on 20 July. A senior Greek finance official told Reuters the aim was for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers to review the accord on Friday 14 August.
Athens is negotiating with European Union institutions and the International Monetary Fund for up to €86bn (£61bn) in fresh loans to stave off economic collapse and stay in the eurozone.
The bailout must be in place by 20 August when Greece has a repayment falling due to the European Central Bank.
The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, is under pressure not only from the payment deadline but also from many in his radical left Syriza party who say the new accord will pile further austerity on a weakened economy and goes against the party’s campaign pledges.
But with his popularity among Greeks still high, Tsipras has warned the dissidents of early elections in the autumn if they continue to resist the measures.
The former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who voted against the new bailout agreement, has dismissed it as “a negotiating fiasco” and said Tsipras could not “avoid the outcry by resorting guiltily and hurriedly to elections”.
“Neither a Syriza-led government nor the country have a future if we accept a third memorandum,” he said in an interview with Avgi on Sunday.
Iskra, a website of the Lafazanis-led Left Platform, the anti-euro group inside Syriza, on Saturday raised the prospect of snap elections as soon as the first half of September.
Quoting anonymous government sources, the website said the plan was to rush the bailout accord through parliament and then immediately call for snap elections in order to “purge” MPs who oppose the new bailout.
- If Tsipras fails to put a debt restructure forward that either defers repayment for decades or shaves a significant amount off Greece's debt, then he is a fool on a fools errand. There is no capacity within the Greek economy to repay the existing debt in any immediate timeframe.This absurd terrorising of the Greek people is the death knell of the EU and the common currency. Every EU member country with a major debt schedule will be busy drafting a strategy for exit from the Euro so they can swiftly respond to the loony voodoo economics of the troika and the Teutonic slave traders.
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