The Eurogroup meeting kept Eurozone finance ministers up until late in another sleepless night on Tuesday, May 24. A deal on Greece was finally reached at dawn the next day. This time, however, the delays were not high-stakes calls to Athens that kept the Eurozone’s finance ministers up until the early hours of Wednesday morning, but the demands of the International Monetary Fund that wanted debt relief for Athens.
Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem finally presented his “breakthrough” deal under which the euro zone agreed to criteria for granting Greece relief on what it owes them in 2018. The IMF’s European Director Poul Thomsen pledged to seek the IMF board approval for resuming its role in the bailout.
IMF Chief Christine Lagarde was absent from the meeting, but was involved via telephone while traveling to Asia on the way to Kazakhstan before going to the G7 Summit in Japan. EU officials questioned the indecision of the IMF and whether it is worth working with the Washington-based Fund in the future. Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb, an ally of Germany in insisting on the IMF’s role as a guarantor so that Greeks do not squander the bailout money, wondered whether the Eurozone should keep the fund involved “at any price”.
Reuters points to private conversations it had with senior officials since the Eurogroup agreement was reached and points to uncertainty regarding the IMF’s engagement.
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