The race to save Greece from economic collapse has intensified as the country’s beleaguered leader conducted a flurry of behind-the-scenes negotiations before an EU summit on Monday that is expected to decide the country’s fate.
Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, met senior officials on Saturday in an attempt to devise a package of reforms that would secure emergency funds and avoid the nation defaulting on its massive debts. It will be the third such proposal that Athens has made to its creditors in as many weeks.
“We will try to supplement our proposal so that we get closer to a solution,” Greece’s minister of state, Alekos Flabouraris, told broadcaster Mega TV. “We are not going [to the summit] with the old proposal. Some work is being done to see where we can converge, so that we achieve a mutually beneficial solution.”
Flabouraris, widely seen as a mentor to the young prime minister, said Tsipras would hold crucial talks with the head of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. The Greek cabinet will meet in an emergency session on Sunday with Tsipras also dispatching senior officials to Brussels.
The frantic diplomacy came as Greece’s eurozone partners warned that, after five months of fruitless talks, the game was up for Tsipras’s radical leftwing government. The country, which has been thrown two lifelines since 2010, has until 30 June to secure €7.2bn (£5.1bn) in bailout funds. Failure to release the loans will result in default, as Greece owes €1.6bn to the International Monetary Fund at the end of the month.
On Friday the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, who convened Monday’s summit, warned the situation was dire. Either Tsipras’s anti-austerity government accepted painful reforms, reportedly at a cost of €5bn, he suggested, or it would go bust.
“We are close to the point where the Greek government will have to choose between accepting what I believe is a good offer of continued support or to head towards default,” he said in a video message. That ultimatum appears to have focused minds.
