PARIS In a climate of growing exasperation and mutual distrust, the Greek government met yesterday late into the night in Brussels with the main leaders of the European Union (EU) to obtain a respite for his country on the brink of financial abyss.
About Greece adjectives are so remanidos nobody wanted to admit yesterday in Brussels that EU leaders accepted the request of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to meet in a mini-summit, because they considered it one last chance.
Virtually bankrupt, with increasingly deteriorating relations with its creditors and its European partners, Athens requested the emergency meeting in which French President participated, François Hollande; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi; the head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and head of the Eurogroup (which brings together the 19 countries of the euro zone), Jeroen Dijsselbloem.
Organized in less than 48 hours outside the true summit held yesterday the 28 EU members, the meeting could be considered at first sight as a success for the young Greek Prime Minister extreme left. But the reality is much bleaker.
“Rather it is the calm before the storm. The specter of a euro exit stirred with increasing insistence on Athens and this meeting was foreseen by Europeans like meeting last chance “confided a French diplomat.
To Tsipras, is officially trying to reach a” political agreement “. In other words, convince creditors of Greece-the ECB, the European Commission and the IMF (the famous troika, hated by the Greeks) – to accept release as quickly as possible a portion of the loans that have yet to be unlocked in under the second bailout (about 7000 million).
Until yesterday, the Eurogroup, underhand inspired by Berlin, had refused to give this favor, demanding that Tsipras team put in implement reforms promised by his predecessor. But time is short. Today, the Greek government was faced with a maturity of more than 2 billion euros and, to make ends meet, to pay salaries and pensions.
The day before yesterday, even Tsipras vast majority did vote for his ” humanitarian law “, which should help the households weakened by the crisis: a grant to house 30,000 families in difficulties and other food aid for 300,000. The plan would amount to several hundred million euros to be found.
The problem is that today, no one knows how much money is in the safe of the Greek state, though all imagine that the situation is very difficult. A team of experts sent by the now-called troika “group in Brussels.” – It is in Athens for a week to get that data
“The Greeks have not given us virtually no information,” confided a member of the delegation. “We are facing a real risk of default,” admitted another.
Despite the agreement reached in extremis on February 20 passed between the lush Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varufakis, and his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble , distrust is total between the two. That explains the freezing of 7 billion euros.
Although the chancellor refuses to contemplate the possibility of Greece leaving the euro, in Berlin increasingly exasperated against the government of Tsipras is greater. In the ranks of the Social Democrats, however, many voices denouncing Schäuble stiffness and reproach a verbal escalation that would be very difficult to forget if the Bundestag should rule in favor of a third package of aid to Athens.
In any case, the big risk is that a real break between creditor rights and convinced a Greek prime minister estimated increasingly marginalized could precipitate a default on payments poorly controlled with unpredictable consequences for entire eurozone. “In such a situation, it is easy to imagine a similar to the scenario Argentina in 2001,” says French economist Philippe Dessertine.
Aware of the danger, President of the EC, Juncker said yesterday ” very concerned “and called each other to” react “quickly. .
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