Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pleaded in the European Parliament yesterday for a fair deal to keep his country in the euro zone, acknowledging Greece’s own responsibility for its plight, after EU leaders gave him five days to come up with reforms.
With its banks closed, cash withdrawals rationed and the economy in freefall, Greece has never been closer to a total state bankruptcy that would probably force it to print an alternative currency and leave the euro.
Yet the leftist premier seemed relaxed and confident, with a note of humility, when he appeared before EU lawmakers in Strasbourg to cheers and scattered boos.
Speaking hours after euro zone peers, at another emergency summit in Brussels, set Greece a deadline of the end of the week to come up with convincing reform proposals, Tsipras said Greeks had no choice but to demand a way out of “this impasse.”
He promised to deliver detailed reform proposals in the next 48 hours.
Speaking before him, European Council President Donald Tusk reiterated the final deadline for Greece was this week.
“Our inability to find an agreement may lead to the bankruptcy of Greece and the insolvency of its banking system,” Tusk said. “And for sure it will be most painful for the Greek people.
Under a timetable agreed at yesterday’s second emergency euro zone summit in less than two weeks, Greece was to submit a formal application for a medium-term loan programme from the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund yesterday, along with a first reform programme, to be detailed on Thursday.
If experts from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund deem the proposals viable, euro zone finance ministers would meet on Saturday to recommend opening negotiations with Athens, and a special summit of the 28-nation EU would meet on Sunday to approve an aid plan.
Before then, Greece is supposed to rush a first wave of reform measures through parliament, euro zone sources said.
Euro zone sources said the key question is whether the Greek reform package will be more ambitious than the spending cuts, tax increases and modest reforms that Greek voters rejected on Sunday in a referendum on a previous bailout plan.
“The numbers have to add up, and the numbers have become vastly more unfavourable since the banks were shut and the economy seized up in the last 10 days,” one euro zone finance official said.