Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has requested a meeting with top European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel at this week’s EU summit, a Greek official said yesterday, as Athens insisted it would not be ‘blackmailed’ over its debt crisis.
Greece is at risk of running out of cash within weeks but its EU partners, angered by the new government’s fiery rhetoric against its international bailout, have frozen financial aid until it shows evidence it is implementing reforms.
The leftist government was elected in January on a promise to scrap the bailout, widely hated for imposing years of austerity on Greeks, but was forced after acrimonious negotiations to accept a four-month extension to the end of June.
With tensions still running high, Greece attacked comments by Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogoup of eurozone finance ministers, who said that pressure on Athens was growing and it would only get an emergency loan if it made real progress on reforms.
He said he wanted to stop things from going as far as they had in Cyprus in 2013, when “the banks were closed a while, and capital controls – cash flows in the country and out of the country – were tied to all manner of conditions”.
Greek government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis accused Dijsselbloem of going beyond his proper role. “We believe it is unnecessary to remind him that Greece cannot be blackmailed,” he said.
As well as Germany’s Merkel, Tsipras also wants European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and French President Francois Hollande to take part in the meeting on the sidelines of the EU summit, which takes place in Brussels tomorrow and Friday.
It appears to be the latest effort by Tsipras to hammer out with EU leaders a “political solution” to resolve Greece’s funding problems, which are worsening as the country remains shut out of debt markets.
A Greek official said Tsipras had made his appeal in a phone call to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who organises EU summits and coordinates business between the EU’s 28 national governments.