Another six months of aid. This is the request that the Greece will send today in a letter to the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. This was announced by Gabriel Sakellaridis, spokesman for the Tsipras government: "Today the Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, will send the request for the extension of the loan program”.
“The deliberations – explained the spokesman – aim to find a common ground, I think we are at a good point. We come to the table to find a solution”, but there are some non-negotiable “red lines”., on which, warns Sakellaridis, Athens does not intend to negotiate. According to the reconstructions, Varoufakis' letter will roughly follow the so-called "Moscovici document", in its fundamental features.
Lo Moscovici schemeactually, it wasn't every six months: it planned to give Greece a four-month debt deferral, in exchange for a commitment to maintain a budget surplus and cancel some reforms envisaged in Syriza's programme.
Meanwhile, the Greek premier Alexis Tsipras announces: "We are at a crucial point with these negotiations, we have sent proposals and we hope to overcome the obstacle". In Europe, continued Tsipras, "there have been protests to support Greece's moves and for the first time we have contacted European leaders to create a positive climate for our requests".
The response from the German finance minister was not long in coming, Wolfgang Schaeuble: the extension of the aid program to Greece "is not acceptable – he said – and will not be accepted without Greece's commitment to carry out the agreed reforms".
Furthermore, today's date will be decisive for Athens also because the ECB he will decide whether to confirm, deny or extend ELA, the support program for the country's banks, without which Greek institutions would risk finding themselves without liquidity in the short term. Also in this case the greatest pressures for the non-extension of the program come from Germany.
