Greek PM defends ’emergency’ plan for potential euro zone exit

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The global Monetary Fund (IMF) has declined to join a new bailout program for Greece until conditions for debt sustainability, including debt relief and economic reforms, are clearly assured.

The European Union agreed that this position was “fully compatible” with its own agenda on a Greek bailout, which could be worth up to €86 billion (RM361 billion). The talks also addressed Greece’s privatization commitments and budget surplus targets.

“As you can understand, there was convergence on some points, and less convergence on others, ” he said. “The discussion was held in a very good climate and will continue”, said Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.

Greece is due to make a massive €3.4 billion repayment to the European Central Bank by 20 August, and the IMF’s decision to avoid getting involved immediately has rendered it increasingly unlikely that Greece will meet this deadline.

ATHENS, Greece — Greeces government announced that the Athens Stock Exchange will reopen Monday, a big step toward normalcy as talks with global creditors shifted into high gear.

Friday’s conferences got here hours after Tsipras defeated a bid by dissenters in his left-wing Syriza celebration to push for an finish to bailout negotiations and search a return to the previous nationwide foreign money, the drachma.

Tsipras effectively lost his majority in parliament in a vote three weeks ago, when almost one-fourth of Syriza’s lawmakers refused to back new austerity measures. He formed a government with the smaller, right wing party Independent Greeks which agreed with his anti-austerity policies.

A vote by the party’s central committee late on Thursday backed his proposal for a party congress in September rather than a congress now or a referendum on Greece’s agreement to launch talks with creditors, as some party radicals had wanted.

Tsipras also defended his embattled former finance minister, who has continued to create headaches for the government since being ousted earlier this month.

“If our creditors were preparing a Grexit plan, should we not have prepared our defences?”

The conclusion means that while the Washington-based Fund will take part in bailout negotiations – which started earlier this week in Athens – it will potentially not decide whether to agree to the programme for several months.

We didn’t design or have a plan to pull the country out of the euro, but we did have emergency plans.

The Supreme Court has forwarded the case to parliament, which has the sole power to determine whether Varoufakis, as a government lawmaker and former minister, can be formally charged. Varoufakis had alleged that the aim would have been to create a parallel banking system to deal with a potential closure of the country’s banks.

He did not directly refer to Varoufakis’ disclosure of plans to hack into his ministry’s software to obtain tax codes.

Citing government sources, the newspaper said the plan included nationalising Greece’s gaming monopoly OPAP – which was privatised in 2013 – in addition to toll proceeds from highways and the country’s biggest bridge.