Cameron to join EU leaders for crunch talks on Greece
DAVID Cameron will join fellow European Union leaders in Brussels today for crisis meetings which could decide whether Greece has a future in the eurozone.
Finance ministers from the eurozone nations were last night locked in talks on Athens’ proposals which offer austerity measures in exchange for a fresh bail-out.
In an indication of the difficulties Greece will face in persuading its international creditors to extend an economic lifeline, the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers warned there was a “major issue of trust” with the Syriza administration in Athens.
Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has offered to implement tax rises and spending cuts in return for a financial lifeline of 53.5 billion euro (£38.5 billion) to stave off bankruptcy and the possibility of crashing out of the euro.
However, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the eurogroup president, said a deal was still a long way off because there was concern that Greece would not meet its promises.
“There is a major issue of trust: can the Greek government actually be trusted to do what they are promising?” he told reporters as he arrived at the Brussels meeting.
That sentiment was echoed by German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.
“We will definitely not be able to rely on promises,” he said.
“We are determined to not make calculations that everyone knows one cannot believe in.”
In Finland, there were reports the coalition government was refusing to back further assistance for Greece.
In a sign of the increasingly desperate attempts to find a solution to the crisis, reports suggested Germany was pushing the idea of a temporary five-year Greek exit from the eurozone.
Theodoros Mihopoulos, who heads Mr Tsipras’ office, said the report in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper “is completely denied”.
According to the report, the German finance ministry also proposed that the Greek government sells off some 50 billion euro (£36 billion) in unspecified property assets to pay off debts.
The report said that in exchange, Greece would remain in the EU and receive additional “growth enhancing, humanitarian and technical assistance”.