Greece given three days to implement new austerity measures

BRUSSELS: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was given three days to push new austerity measures through parliament and keep alive Greece's chances of staying in the euro. Finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels demanded Greece enact economic reforms before opening detailed negotiations on an aid package of at least €74 billion ($83 billion).

They left it to the region’s leaders, who started their own session a few hours later, to pin down how far those measures should go. If Tsipras misses that deadline, Greece may be suspended from the currency union, Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb said. “Greece is being given exactly two choices,” Stubb said. “It’s a rather black-and-white choice.”

Riled by six months of personal attacks and contradictory messages from Athens, euro-area policy makers are forcing Tsipras to overcome the credibility gap they said was a key hurdle to more loans. They’re no longer willing to take him at his word.

“The situation is extremely difficult if you consider the economic situation in Greece and the worsening in the last few months, but what has been lost also in terms of trust and reliability,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters.

With Greek banks rationing cash and the European Central Bank reviewing how long it can keep the country’s financial system alive, Tsipras won a stay of execution as he arrived at the summit when a Sunday meeting of the 28 European Union leaders was canceled. The full group of leaders would only have gathered to discuss how to handle Greece’s exit from the euro, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

The leaders’ summit began with presentations on the state of play from officials including Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the finance ministers’ leader, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and Tsipras himself, according to an EU official. The leaders then set out their own positions before they broke for bilateral meetings. Tsipras will hold a session with Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, a Greek official said.

Creditors are using the calendar as leverage on Greece. Tsipras’s predecessors were given months to enact economic reforms after tapping the first bailout loans in 2010.