A Greek deputy minister said yesterday Athens might call snap elections to break an impasse with lenders that threatens to push the country into bankruptcy and out of the euro. The statement follows Greece’s delayed repayment of an IMF loan due this month.
“The lenders want to impose hard measures. If they do not back down from this package of blackmail, the government ... will have to seek alternative solutions, elections,” Deputy Social Security Minister Dimitris Stratoulis, a hardliner in the government, told Antenna TV.
Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said the latest deal, drawn up earlier this week by top level officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was unacceptable, but stressed that his country did not want to leave the eurozone.
Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet Greek Prime Minister during business conference
“Our government has a mandate to remain in the euro and get a better deal to ... try to change the terms of the agreement that we have with European partners,” he told BBC radio. “Greece has to remain within the euro.”
An opinion poll published yesterday on the website Newsit showed that three out of four Greeks wanted to stay in the 19-nation eurozone, while almost one in two was in favour of the government reaching a compromise deal.
Some 37 per cent of people questioned in the Alco survey supported early elections to resolve the standoff.
“It is more likely that there will be elections than not,” Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollster, told Greek radio.
Greece decided to postpone payment of the €300 million loan on Thursday, just hours after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was presented with a tough compromise deal from lenders that crossed many of his “red lines”, including tax hikes and pension reform.
The offer is aimed at shoring up Greek state coffers, but it has triggered fury in Greece’s ruling Syriza party. Early elections would be a way to seek public legitimacy for the difficult decisions needed to secure more cash.
Greece’s bailout expires at the end of June and, if no cash-for-reforms deal is done by then, default would seem certain, shunting the eurozone into uncharted waters and opening the way for Greece to exit the single currency.It was the first time in five years of crisis that Greece has postponed a repayment on its €240 billion bailouts from eurozone governments, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF said the manoeuvre was unorthodox, but permissible.
An EU source said Tsipras could return to Brussels for further talks during the night or early today, possibly along with top IMF and ECB officials.
Time is running out to clinch a deal and get desperately needed further disbursements approved by national parliaments, some of which have appeared highly reluctant to offer Greece much budget slack, before the bailout programme expires.
Meanwhile also yesterday President Vladimir Putin and Tsipras discussed plans for a pipeline to carry Russian gas to Europe via Turkey and agreed to meet in Russia in two weeks, the Kremlin said.
It said the two leaders, who spoke by telephone, would meet at an annual business conference taking place in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg on June 18-20.
The Kremlin gave no details of the discussions on the pipeline dubbed Turkish Stream, which is planned as an alternative to the South Stream project scrapped by Moscow in December.
A visit by Tspiras to Moscow in April caused concern in some EU states that Greece could break ranks over economic sanctions on Russia, imposed over the Ukraine crisis, to secure Russian funds to help it meet debt repayments.