Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to his party’s lawmakers yesterday to back a tough reforms package after abruptly offering last-minute concessions to try to save the country from financial meltdown.
After walking into a party meeting to applause, Tsipras rallied his Syriza lawmakers to throw their weight behind the new proposals ahead of a snap vote in parliament on the negotiations, urging them to help keep Greece in the euro. “We are confronted with crucial decisions,” a government official quoted Tspiras telling his Syriza lawmakers.
“We got a mandate to bring a better deal than the ultimatum that the Eurogroup gave us, but certainly not given a mandate to take Greece out of the eurozone,” he said. “We are all in this together.”
It is unclear whether all the creditors would back the latest reforms package, which was strikingly similar to the terms Greece had rejected in a referendum Tsipras had called in June. Germany sounded wary, with a finance ministry spokesman ruling out any debt reduction that would lower its real value.
But France, Greece’s strongest supporter in the euro zone, rushed to offer praise with President Francois Hollande calling the offer “serious and credible”. Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem called it a “thorough piece of text” but declined to go into specifics.
“Broad support in Greece gives it more credibility, but even then we need to consider carefully whether the proposal is good and if the numbers add up,” he told reporters. “One way or the other, it is a very major decision we need to take.”
Nevertheless, Greece would have to overcome a hardening of attitudes towards it among its euro zone partners, including Germany, which has contributed more to Greek bailouts than any other country. Some, including a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, greeted the latest reform proposals with scepticism.
Finance ministers of the 19-nation euro area will meet today to decide whether to recommend opening negotiations on a third bailout programme despite exasperation at the five-year-old Greek crisis. A senior EU official said the meeting would include discussions on whether Greece needs some debt relief.
