Greek PM Tsipras had his first meeting with the top dogs of European austerity. From the Guardian account:
The crucial meeting ran until 2am on Friday, when Tsipras came face-to-face for the first time with the leaders of his key creditors – Merkel and Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. The other five present at the crisis talks were the French president, François Hollande; the presidents of the European Commission and Council, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk; Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the committee of eurozone finance ministers; and Uwe Corsepius, a senior eurocrat who has just been appointed Merkel’s EU adviser. According to an authoritative account of what took place, Tsipras started the negotiations by making it clear he expected urgently needed bailout funds released without giving very much in return. According to the account, he was disabused of that notion within 10 minutes and the meeting then ran smoothly. Despite the public squabbling, in private Tsipras disclosed his priority, for reasons of domestic political consumption, was to portray the reform package as something new, quite different from the austerity programmes imposed on Greece for the past five years. He did not balk at the tough bailout terms outlined by Merkel, Draghi and Dijsselbloem, according to the account, as long as he was able to present the package as a sovereign Greek government decision. Full article at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/20/greece-financial-crisis-eu-offers-funds-in-return-for-urgent-reforms _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
