Brussels, 19/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Upon their arrival at the European summit, on Thursday 19 March, the European leaders stressed their firm stance towards Athens, with a multilateral meeting to take place to try to resolve the problem.
On the sidelines of the Summit, the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, set the tone, in comments reported by AFP. “It is high time that our neighbours living in the eurozone (…) stuck to their commitments to apply the rules”, adding that Bulgaria had also struggled to pay back its old debts, “but we did it”. The Finnish Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, stressed the need to stand firm on the commitments taken at Eurogroup level. This is the message to be sent out to the Greek Prime Minister by France, Germany, the ECB and the Commission at a multilateral meeting to be attended by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the French President, François Hollande, the Presidents of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, plus the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras.
“What all sides will be reminded of during the meeting is the need to respect commitments”, said François Hollande, on his arrival. “The Greeks have to demonstrate that they are carrying out the reforms expected of them and Europe must make the financial resources available to the Greeks to allow them to honour their commitments”, he added.
Donald Tusk took pains to calm things down. “This meeting is not a last-chance meeting”, he told a press conference. He explained that he had wanted to avoid conflictual discussions within the European Council. However, the format decided upon was not to the liking of everybody, particularly the small states left on the sidelines. “I am angry, the Belgian government has not given France and Germany a mandate to negotiate on its behalf. Belgium is concerned in this case to the tune of seven billion euros”, said the Belgian leader. He added that he plans to raise his complaints at the meeting of the leaders. Xavier Bettel, prime minister of Luxembourg, said that he would have preferred to attend the meeting.
The Finnish and Estonian leaders, on the other hand, did not appear put out by the format, which is not necessarily to the liking of the participants. The German Chancellor has said that the Council was not the “right framework” for decisions to be made and that these were a matter for the Eurogroup.
Greece has to pay around €330 million back to the IMF on Friday and will be renewing its treasury bonds for €1.6 billion next week. With what is left over, one diplomat estimated that the country could hold out until May. The problem is that the technical discussions ultimately aiming to make the eurozone funds available are making no progress, hence the Greeks' preference for political discussions. (Elodie Lamer)