Galery

1

The Greek government has carried out its threat and has not paid the loan to the International Monetary Fund as a "counter measure" of the failure to reach an agreement with creditors.

In addition, another teleconference call between Alexis Tsipras, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande took place late last night, during which the Greek Prime Minister explained to them the reasons why he had not accepted the proposals of the "institutions".

In this situation, the political negotiations to solve the Greek problem are starting to resemble a thriller of nerves of steel. The Greek government is putting all its cards on the table, raising the level of tension and risking provoking unexpected reactions.

Senior members of the Greek government had been warning for a few days that Athens might not repay the loan to the IMF with statements like, "If there is a probability of reaching an agreement, we will pay. If not, it makes no sense to make a loan payment of 300 million euro on 5 June in view of the fact that four payments totalling 1.6 billion euro are due by the end of the month."

Analysts point out that yesterday's decision of Athens not to repay the loan is a surprise to the IMF. It is not clear whether this development is surprising to Greece's European partners and creditors, as the government sources indicate that the message had been sent to Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker on time.

According to the same sources, "the other side of the Atlantic" has been also aware of it since Wednesday night when the White House convened a meeting on "the Greek issue" while
the meeting between Tsipras and Juncker was taking place in Brussels.

In all cases, the IMF that is firmly standing behind its position has accepted Greece's decision not to make the loan payment.

According to Athens, the gap that separates its proposal from that of the creditors is to blame on the IMF and "the European forces that are uniting behind it, including German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble." After last night's conversation the government sources indicated that Alexis Tsipras had stated to Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande that "the proposal of the institutions cannot be accepted as the basis of an agreement, since it is not taking into account the course of the negotiations that have taken place in Brussels over the past months."

In other words, he said that the creditors had ignored the four-month-long consultations, again bringing to the fore the "problematic" measures of the fifth evaluation of the bailout. These are today's "red lines" of the government, although some of them, such as VAT and privatizations are not so scarlet, as stated by the cabinet sources.

The message of Alexis Tsipras was that he had made concessions on many issues whereas the creditors wanted him to continue to implement the "recessionary measures that are not producing results." Therefore, he insisted that "namely the Greek proposal reflects the common position that has been formulated during the negotiations."

The Greek media report that another round of talks will be held within the next three days since Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, Jean-Claude Juncker, Christine Lagarde and Mario Draghi will meet on Monday in Bavaria where the G7 summit will take place.

So far, the Greek Prime Minister has not been invited to participate in it. A similar meeting with the same composition was held in Brussels last Monday, at which Alexis Tsipras was not present.

In Greece itself, the atmosphere is hot. The discussion on the progress of negotiations that will take place at the level of political party leaders in parliament tonight at the request of the Greek Prime Minister will probably be stormy, with possible surprises.

For example, one government official is not excluding the probability of Alexis Tsipras clearly warning that he will announce early elections if no agreement is reached because of the creditors.

The SYRIZA parliamentary group, which consists of 149 deputies, will attend the meeting in high spirits due to the rejection of the creditors’ proposals and mostly because of the non-payment of the loan to the IMF.

The parliamentary group of SYRIZA’s coalition partner Independent Greeks, the 13 MPs of which strongly support the actions of the cabinet, will meet an hour before the meeting, at 5:30 pm.