Juncker refuses to take phone call from Tsipras

thenews 2015.06.13 20:58 #11

Weekend talks are Juncker's last attempt at compromise - EU official

Breaking headlines from BBG, citing an unnamed EU official

EU official says Greece has made new suggestions for a deal
Says Greek aid talks are tough
Says fronts hardening in Greek aid talks
Juncker wants Greek aid accord by market open on June 15

Talks in Brussels are ongoing. The part about new suggestions is encouraging and I believe there will be a deal but both sides are taking it to the limit.

Another question is that when he says 'market open' he doesn't likely mean FX in Asia on Sunday/Monday. I suspect there will be trading before there's a deal.

Greece's Euro Exit Seems Eur/usd Eurogroup Gives Greece 10

myname 2015.06.14 04:24 #12

And they are going on and on. Sad

name 2015.06.14 17:28 #13

nbtrading:
And they are going on and on. Sad

Greece did not made new suggestions for a deal

That "EU official" is just a lie

thenews 2015.06.15 10:10 #14

'We Will Not Surrender': Greece

Speaking to Greece's state-run TV on Monday, Defence Minister Panos Kammenos - who is also the head of the government’s coalition right-wing partner Independent Greeks, struck a defiant tone showing unity in the Greek coalition government:

"The position of Greece and the Greek government is clear. For so many years Greeks have been forced to endure misery because of the failed policies that lenders imposed," Kammenos said.

"These policies aren’t going to continue, we are not going to surrender democracy, nor our parents, the Greek men and women pensioners who are now living under the poverty line. We have made a huge effort to find a solution. It is now up to them," he added, calling on Greece's creditors to choose whether "they want a solution" or whether they want "to impoverish and humiliate a country."

Kammenos echoed the words of Greece’s top negotiator Euclid Tsakalotos, who has blamed Greece’s lenders for the collapse in talks over the weekend, saying they didn’t have any mandate to negotiate a compromise.

Creditors without any mandate to compromise

"We made huge efforts to meet them halfway but they insisted on both pension cuts and the increase in VAT on restaurants and would not accept closing the gap even partially via administrative measures to reduce tax evasion, even though this was a central plank of our electoral program.

Moreover, they told us bluntly they had no mandate to discuss a compromise! So much for negotiating...," Tsakalotos told the British Guardian on Sunday.

Adding to the defiant tone, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reiterated the government's position that Greece will not cave in and will wait "patiently" until lenders become realistic.

"One can only see a political purposefulness in the insistence of creditors on new cuts in pensions after five years of looting under the bailouts...We will await patiently until the institutions accede to realism. We do not have the right to bury European democracy at the place where it was born," Tsipras told the Greek Ton Syntakton newspaper.

source

Greece's Euro Exit Seems Eur/usd Eurogroup Gives Greece 10

thenews 2015.06.16 18:07 #15

Juncker accuses Tsipras of twisting EU's words to Greeks

Jean-Claude Juncker rebuked Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday, accusing him of giving his voters a deliberately distorted version of proposals the EU chief executive had made to resolve Athens' debt crisis.

The flash of anger, as European Commission President Juncker prefaced an answer at a news conference by saying he cared about Greece's people but not its government, was in sharp contrast to his efforts over the past four months to befriend the novice leftist premier in the course of tortuous negotiations.

Underlining the sour mood between Athens and Brussels, the Greek finance minister insisted the government had not twisted Juncker's position and said the veteran EU dealmaker was either unaware of his staff's proposals or his memory was failing.

With Greece struggling to avoid a default in two weeks that could bounce it out of the euro, Tsipras had fulminated earlier to his parliamentary allies that EU and IMF creditors were demanding pension cuts and tax hikes to "humiliate not only the Greek government ... but humiliate an entire people."

Among lenders' proposals, he said, was a 10-percentage point increase in the value-added tax on electricity. Other ministers have criticised suggestions to hike VAT on medicines.

At a news briefing in Brussels, Juncker, 60, effectively accused the 40-year-old Tsipras of misleading voters.

"I don't care about the Greek government," he said. "I do care about the Greek people, mainly the poorest part."

"I'm not in favour, and the prime minister knows that, ... of increasing VAT on medicaments and electricity," he said. "This would be a major mistake."

"The debate in Greece and outside Greece would be easier if the Greek government would tell exactly what the Commission ... are really proposing," Juncker continued. "I'm blaming the Greeks (for) tell(ing) things to the Greek public which are not consistent with what I told the Greek prime minister."

A Greek government spokesman said it had never said the proposals were the Commission's alone. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was combative, saying EU proposals did include VAT hikes: "Juncker either hadn't read the document he gave Tsipras," he said. "Or he read it and forgot about it."

Juncker said he had not spoken to Tsipras since late on Sunday, "when I decided to stop the negotiations because the negotiations, given the Greek position, were getting nowhere."

Last week, the former Luxembourg premier made clear his disillusion with Tsipras and fears for Europe's single currency.

"In order to remain friends, one has to respect some minimum rules," Juncker said. "I've always tried to build bridges. But I'm still waiting for Greece to build its part of the bridge."

Juncker refuses to take phone call from Tsipras - page 2