Brussels, June 3 (IANS) Greece’s international creditors have developed a joint proposal on the reform plan that is being considered for Athens to unblock pending financial aid, an offer that will be addressed shortly by the Greek government, Eurozone sources told Spanish news agency Efe.
There exists a “joint document” of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said the sources without revealing further details of the proposal or when exactly it would be presented to Greece.
Other sources, however, said that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was expected to travel to Brussels to meet EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, late on Wednesday.
Tsipras has outlined his own proposal to the creditors and said it was a complete programme of reforms in which he has made concessions, adding that the decision was now in the hands of European political leaders.
The Eurozone sources said the Greek plan was still “insufficient and not global”, which has been a long-standing demand of the creditors.
Both parties expect to close this week an agreement on reforms to be applied by Athens to end the fifth and final review of the plan to rescue the country and gain access to the 7.2 billion euros ($8.05 billion) remaining of the second financial programme, deferred in February by four months until June 30.
However, the fact that creditors consider the latest Greek proposal to be inadequate and that they have made another offer may even delay the agreement since it remains to be seen if Greece accepts the conditions posed by the institutions.
Having recognised that differences continue to persist, the Eurozone insisted that “we are still not there”, in reference to a possible agreement.
Both parties are aware that an agreement is urgently needed, taking into account that Athens has to cope with a new payment to the IMF.
Greece must pay back this week the first tranche of about 300 million euros to the IMF and, in total, must return 1.6 billion euros by this month.
Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Tuesday in an interview with RTL television channel that even if an agreement was reached this week, an immediate disbursement was technically impossible.
This is because, first, a technical agreement is needed which then must be approved in the Eurogroup following which Greece must start implementing reforms before it can expect even a partial disbursement.