Greece’s attempts to continue to remain a veritable bottomless pit for unserviceable debt which it has no intention of repaying were somewhat thwarted yesterday evening by the rejection by Eurozone finance ministers of the Greek government’s request to extend its bailout.
A matter of hours before the expiry of the deadline by which Greece must settle a 1.6 billion euro installment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), officials from within other European Union member states have pulled up the drawbridge.
Greece’s electorate made their stance clear earlier this year in the election of socialist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose anti-austerity ethos has been vocally expressed, and whose wish to keep Greece the subject of continual funding from the IMF that the nation has no intention of repaying, rather than regenerating industrial methods of becoming self sufficient.
In a report by the BBC, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said it would be “crazy” to extend the Greek bailout beyond its midnight expiration as Athens was refusing accept the European proposals on the table.
peaking after the conference call, he added that a Greek request for a new €29.1bn European aid programme would be considered later.
The European Commission – one of Greece’s “troika” of creditors along with the IMF and the eurozone’s European Central Bank – wants Athens to raise taxes and cut welfare spending to meet its debt obligations.
Amid fears of a Greek default on its huge public debt of €323bn, a run on the banks has amassed, and capital controls are now in place.
If a payment to the IMF is missed and managing director Christine Lagarde informs her board, the eurozone would have the right under the loan agreements to demand immediate repayment of more than €180 billion they have already lent Greece which equates to over a third of the European Central Bank’s capitalization, with no collateral of any value as the security was provided in the form of Greek banks.
On Tuesday evening, thousands of pro-EU protesters braved stormy weather and gathered outside the Greek parliament in Athens to urge a “yes” vote in a referendum on Sunday over whether the country should accept its creditors’ proposals.