European Leaders and IMF to Offer Greece a Plan for Consideration

European leaders and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to accelerate negotiations and offer Greece a plan to consider in the coming days, according to a Bloomberg report.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi, French President Francois Hollande and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had an emergency meeting in Berlin on Monday night that lasted until past midnight. The heads of the IMF and ECB joined the talks unexpectedly.
The goal was to prepare a plan that Greece could consider in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the plan, said the report.
According to another Financial Times report, citing an official from Greece’s bailout monitors, the plan is intended to generate a “quick reaction” from Athens. It will include no concessions to Greece but it will “spell out the core principles creditors need to conclude a deal.” The plan is based on the 70% of the current bailout program Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that Athens agrees on.
No statements were made after the meeting, but an official statement from the German Chancellery later on said that the five officials “agreed that work must now be continued with greater intensity” and all sides, including Greece, will remain in close contact within the next days to work on a deal.
On the Greek side, in a column published by French newspaper Le Monde on Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said his government is not to blame for the impasse and he blamed the creditors’ intransigence.
“It is rather because of the obsession of some institutional representatives who insist on unreasonable solutions and are being indifferent to the democratic result of recent Greek elections,” he wrote.
“To some, this represents a golden opportunity to make an example out of Greece for other countries that might be thinking of not following this new line of discipline,” the Greek Prime Minister wrote.
Tsipras said his government has made concessions on privatizations, value added tax and the pension system, which it had previously opposed.

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