Greek banks to reopen Monday but cash restrictions remain

The new ministers are expected to be sworn in on Saturday.

Greece last week had to agree to a tough fiscal package to earn a three-year bailout from its worldwide creditors and avoid crashing out of the eurozone.

With central and east European states growing more assertive and the Dutch and Finns facing mounting domestic constraints, a compromise between euro zone leaders Germany and France, increasingly hard to find over Greece, is no longer sufficient to settle the problems.

A bank employee distributes tags with queue positions to Greek pensioners.

Tsipras has acknowledged the package he signed up to went against his election promises but insists he had no other choice, as the alternative would have seen Greece forced out of the euro – a development that most experts say would have caused massive short-term damage to the Greek economy.

“At that time their difference was only 2.5 billion euros”, he said.

But Merkel argued for a new deal to be negotiated to prevent a Greek exit from the euro that might undermine the entire currency union, and said neither Greece nor the other 18 euro zone member countries were willing to accept a suspension. Last month Greece became the first developed country ever to default on a repayment to the International Monetary Fund.

“The most important thing in the negotiations was to help Greece”.

Five members of the radical-left Syriza party, the coalition’s senior party, were replaced.

For example, in The New Yorker, John Cassidy called the text from Monday morning’s Euro Summit “an agreement that is perhaps the most intrusive and demanding contract between an advanced nation and its creditors since the Second World War”.

Although austerity measures implemented by successive governments have reduced the annual budget deficit, Greece’s debt burden has swelled to around 180 percent of its GDP as the Greek economy continues to shrink. By then Greece’s economy may have gone further off the rails and Greeks may be heading for early elections.

This substitution of public money for private funding isn’t a new phenomenon. During later clashes in central Athens between hundreds of hooded protestors throwing rocks and petrol bombs, and riot police with tear gas, those arrested were foreigners, not Greeks.

The Greek prime minister has sought to rid his government of hardline leftists who oppose further austerity, reshuffling his cabinet barely 48 hours after dissidents broke ranks over a draconian bailout deal for the debt-stricken country.

The Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, whose backing was essential for the talks to start, decisively approved the move by 439 votes to 119, but nearly a fifth of Merkel’s conservatives voted “No”. He will need continuing support from the pro-European centrist opposition parties who supported the agreement with creditors.

Also on Friday, the finance ministers of the 19 eurozone countries were about to give the green light to open negotiations on the third plan of aid to Greece, worth 82 to 86 billion euros over three years via the relief fund of the euro zone, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

With Greeks now able to withdraw up to 420 euros at once per week, people will be spared the ordeal of queuing daily at ATMs in the summer heat, which thousands did for three weeks for a mere allowance of 60 euros per day.

According to the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EBEA) some 4,500 containers with raw materials and finished products are blocked at customs.