The government will table its latest “11th hour” proposal to creditors in Parliament on Thursday evening. The proposal is written in English and will be submitted in all of one article!
Moreover, according to reports out of Athens and Brussels, creditors have already provided the first “ok” after receiving the signed copies of Athens’ proposals for the latest bailout package.
The text includes the measures the government intends to take, but not the Greek sides requests, such as the level of funding, debt restructuring etc.
A Parliament plenary session will be convened after 2 p.m. (local time) on Friday for a vote on whether to authorize PM Alexis Tsipras, Deputy PM Yannis Dragasakis and FinMin Eucleid Tsakalotos to negotiate and sign an agreement with creditors.
The framework of the deal will be tabled in Parliament on Thursday evening.
The voting in Greece 300-deputy Parliament will be taken via the process used for urgent legislation, meaning that the vote will not translate into a law of the state, but only gives Parliament’s authorization.
Following negotiations the regular Parliament process will be followed.
Recipients of the latest Greek proposal will be Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who will forward it to other EZ FinMins.
“New Greek proposals received by Eurogroup President Dijsselbloem,” was the Tweet by the spokesman for Dijsselbloem, Michel Reigns.
The development comes after Cabinet members approved the measures, with the entire document expected to be emailed later in the evening to the ESM, the fund from which Athens requested bailout aid this week.
The package of measures envisioned by the radical leftist government is calculated at between 12 to 13 billion euros!
“You all know very well that the proposal has been approved by the council of political leaders, and so it was approved by the Cabinet (today),” Greek DM Panos Kammenos, the leader of the junior coalition party, told reporters upon exiting the Maximos Mansion government house.
On his part, Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis, said the package would also be presented to ruling SYRIZA party’s deputies.
An increasingly determined Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, appears ready to finalize the deal, particularly after the specter of “Grexit” appeared clearly on the horizon this past week. Eurozone leaders more-or-less presented Tsipras with an ultimatum in Brussels, i.e. present a new package deal that is “realistic” in order to resume funding and liquidity “injections” by the ECB.
Tsipras’ has his back to the wall, given that banks in the country remain closed, and along with unprecedented capital controls, translate into heavy losses for the “real economy”.
One key element that Athens appears to be adamant over is the inclusion of a reference to debt restructuring.
Ruling SYRIZA party’s Parliament group will convene at … 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and conclude at 2 p.m. (12.00 GMT) on Friday, while Greek Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou was already at the Maximos Mansion government house on Thursday afternoon.
The early morning session (for politicians) raised eyebrows in Athens, and mostly testifies to the urgency of the meeting and developments.
According to reports by Proto Thema, the time, date and procedure by which the Greek government proposal to creditors will be tabled and voted on in Parliament is under consideration by the government.
Another question was how leftist SYRIZA’s ‘internal opposition’ would react to the third bailout plan.
Internal opposition
Earlier, Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who expresses the views of the virulently anti-capitalist “Left Platform”, stated that “Greece seek to reach an agreement with the Institutions immediately, but we want an agreement that will respect the country and the people’s dignity and one that will open windows for an exit from the crisis. We do not want to add a third memorandum of harsh austerity, suffering and deprivation to the two previous ones, without offering a better prospect to the country,” he said.
