By JAMES KANTER and NIKI KITSANTONISAPRIL 27, 2016
The New York Times
BRUSSELS — Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece asked on Wednesday for a summit meeting of eurozone leaders that would allow him to make his case for easier terms on sorely needed aid to help his country avoid bankruptcy.
Without new rescue money by July, Greece could default on its debts and throw the 19-member eurozone into another period of chaos. There could also be a domestic upheaval in Greece similar to last summer, when the country had a referendum on the terms accompanying its third bailout, followed by snap general elections.
Mr. Tsipras’s latest plea is similar to one he used a year ago, when he won plaudits at home for negotiating one-on-one with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
However, at a summit meeting in July, the left-wing Mr. Tsipras ended up accepting a third bailout in five years on even worse terms than if he had settled the matter earlier. And European leaders are in no mood to engage in yet another round of brinkmanship with Greece while facing an array of other challenges, including the prospect of Britain’s leaving the European Union and pressure from an assertive Russia.
Olga Gerovasili, a government spokeswoman, said that Mr. Tsipras spoke on Wednesday with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, which represents the European Union’s 28 national leaders, and asked him to hold a special summit meeting on Greece involving eurozone leaders if a meeting of eurozone finance ministers was not held.
A government official, who spoke on the customary condition of anonymity, told reporters that Mr. Tsipras wanted to ensure that the terms of the bailout of 86 billion euros, or about $97 billion, were being maintained. Crucially for Greece, those terms included plans for some easing of repayments of its colossal debt, which is equivalent to about 177 percent of its gross domestic product.
Mr. Tusk, however, sought on Wednesday to keep the talks, for now, among eurozone finance ministers, collectively referred to as the Eurogroup. He confirmed in a statement that he had spoken to Mr. Tsipras and posted on his Twitter account that such a meeting should be held in “days, not weeks.”
He added that the region needed to avoid a “situation of renewed uncertainty for Greece.”
Eurozone finance ministers had been tentatively scheduled to meet on Thursday to decide whether new measures passed by Greece were sufficient to obtain funds that would allow it to make a repayment of €2.3 billion by July 20 on bonds held by the European Central Bank. But plans for that meeting were scrapped because of a lack of progress in talks between Greek officials and lenders.
A deal is also needed at this point to allow the International Monetary Fund to make a financial contribution to the bailout and for the lenders — mainly the European Central Bank, as well as countries in the eurozone like Germany — to start negotiations on ways to ease Greece’s debt burden.
The I.M.F. is in an awkward position in the debt talks. It wants lenders like Germany to ease Greece’s repayment burden as a condition for helping to fund the bailout, a request that Berlin has said may not be necessary. The I.M.F.’s goal is to make the prospect of Greece paying back its loans more realistic, so it has also been pushing for tough austerity measures and for assurances that Athens will carry out changes.
Even so, Greece does have some leverage as an important player in Europe’s migration crisis, which has been concentrated in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.
Turkey and the European Union have reached a deal to return most of the migrants who cross the Aegean Sea, and Greek participation is crucial for that arrangement to continue.
Mr. Tsipras is also reluctant to cave in to lenders’ demands at a time of opposition to further austerity from a radical faction inside his Syriza party. The country has also been roiled by rolling strikes to protest threats to pensions. The faction within Syriza says it would prefer to “fall heroically” than yield to foreign demands for more belt-tightening.
There were signs of progress at a meeting last week in Amsterdam, where the eurozone and the I.M.F. agreed to hold Greece to a supplementary set of reforms in case the country deviates from its current fiscal targets.
But Greece has refused to put those measures into law, saying they go beyond the July agreement and are against domestic law. It offered instead to set up a mechanism that would automatically cut state spending if targets were not met.
James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Niki Kitsantonis from Athens.
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