ATHENS, Greece—Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is heading to Brussels on Wednesday to discuss his radical-left government’s proposal for a long-delayed deal with Greece’s creditors that Athens hopes will unlock vitally needed bailout funds.
Tsipras was invited to Brussels by European Commission head Jean Claude Juncker, with whom he was to meet for talks on Wednesday evening, a Greek government official said.
Without bailout funds, Greece could default on its debts and crash out of the euro, the joint European currency, pushing Europe and potentially the global economy into turmoil. Tsipras announced on Tuesday he had submitted his proposal the previous night, as the leaders of France, Germany, the European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission (EC) met in Berlin to discuss Greece.
He gave no details of the proposal, but Greece’s creditors said much work remained to be done.
Tsipras’s government has been struggling through frequently deadlocked negotiations with the ECB, IMF, EC and other euro-zone countries for four months for a deal to unlock the €7.5 billion ($8.4 billion) remaining in its bailout.
Time is pressing, with Greece facing repayments to the IMF of €1.6 billion this month. The first installment of just over €300 million is due on Friday, with other installments due on June 12, 16 and 19. Although it insists it intends to repay its debts, it is fast running out of money to do so.
Locked out of the international bond markets due to prohibitively high interest rates demanded for its bonds and starved of bailout cash since last August, Greece is facing a severe cash shortage. So far it has managed to scrape together enough to repay its debts by seizing the reserves of state enterprises, including municipalities, schools, embassies and hospitals. But those funds will not be enough to sustain the country through the summer, when it also faces large repayments to the ECB.
Image credits: AP/Thanassis Stavrakis