Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras takes the negotiation with the country’s creditors upon himself as talks between technical teams in Brussels have stalled again.
Tsipras was at the government headquarters on Thursday afternoon where the negotiating team leader, Giorgos Chouliarakis, had a teleconference with the creditors’ technical team. That was the reason the Prime Minister was not present at SYRIZA‘s political secretariat meeting.
Analysts say the notion that Tsipras has taken the negotiation upon himself is reinforced by the fact that Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was not present during the teleconference with the creditors’ technical team but he had a meeting with his Ministry officials. Technical talks with the creditors’ representatives, the Brussels Group, will start again on Monday.
According to sources close to the government, the Greek Prime Minister will seek a political solution to the Greek issue at the European Union summit in Riga on May 21. He believes that it will be easier to achieve that instead of relying in technical talks, they said. And this is the reason he wants to have control of negotiations.
European Union officials say Greek issue not on the agenda of May 21 summit
Brussels sources said that a Greek request to discuss the debt issue at the Riga summit will be denied as it will cause distress to the rest of country leaders.
The main reason is that the summit is between the EU and eastern partnership country-members and not a regular EU summit where strictly EU members’ issues are discussed. It is a summit where third countries issues are discussed, such as peace in Ukraine.
According to the Brussels sources, it is impossible for the summit agenda to change and include Greece, since mainly diplomatic issues will be discussed regarding Russia and Ukraine and there is no time allocated for other issues. Furthermore, EU issues cannot be discussed in front of third parties. Finally, there is already a political decision of the 19 country-members and it dictates the completion of the evaluation of Greece’s bailout program.
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