Greece to come up with counter-proposals, says Dijsselbloem
Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Thursday that the gap between Greece and its lenders narrowed after discussions this week and that Athens is expected to present alternatives to lenders’ proposals within days.
Greece is negotiating with the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank over budgetary reforms that would release bailout funds and help the country avoid a default and possible exit from the euro.
Talks that began on Wednesday in Brussels and concluded after midnight were “successful in narrowing down the remaining issues”, Dijsselbloem said on the sidelines of a conference in Amsterdam 12 hours later.
But he also said the differences were “still quite large” and warned that Greece risked making a deal impossible if it excluded too many areas of reform.
A deal “has to add up in economic terms, in budgetary terms. They acknowledge that. So it was a realistic meeting,” he said.
He said that pension reforms, a hot-button issue for both Greeks and EU taxpayers who ultimately foot the bill for Greece’s bailouts, are on the table.
“I don’t think anybody is excluding pension reforms, but the question is much more about how to do it,” he said.
Members of Greek President Alexis Tsipras’ own SYRIZA party reacted angrily on Thursday to the prospect of pension reforms or tax increases being included in any deal after Tsipras’s dinner meeting with Dijsselbloem and European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Dijsselbloem suggested it was unlikely that a solution to Greece’s finances will be agreed by Friday.
The Greeks “will look at our proposals more carefully, probably come up with some alternative proposals that they want,” Dijsselbloem said.
He said that the parties would meet again “within a few days.”
“Whether that can be tomorrow I don’t know yet,” he said. “There’s no point in sitting in a room together without having made any progress.”
[Reuters]
