Eurogroup will not meet Thursday – Greek PM seeks leaders summit

Bloomberg — Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will seek a meeting of euro-area leaders to resolve disagreements between the government and creditors, a move echoing last year’s drama when a quarrel over bailout terms almost pushed the country out of the currency bloc.

Tsipras is scheduled to call European Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday morning local time to ask a Euro Summit be convened, a Greek government official said in a text message to reporters on Tuesday. The meeting is intended to confirm the latest review of the bailout terms will be in line with what was agreed in July 2015, the official said, asking not to be identified in line with policy.

The message was released a few hours after finance ministers of the currency bloc canceled plans to hold an extraordinary meeting on April 28, which would have paved the way for a disbursement of the next tranche of emergency loans to Greece and start discussions about official sector debt re-profiling. More time is needed to hammer out issues including a contingency package of austerity measures and the ministers will reconvene at a “later stage,” said Michel Reijns, a spokesman for Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem, in a Twitter post.

Greece is at loggerheads with auditors representing creditor institutions, over a demand to preemptively legislate belt-tightening measures equal to 2 percent of gross domestic product, which would kick in automatically if the government falls short of the budget targets envisaged in its bailout agreement. The latest assessment of its aid terms is already six months behind schedule, raising renewed doubts about whether it will secure emergency loans soon enough to avert a default in July when bonds held by the European Central Bank come due.

Dijsselbloem had previously said a meeting could be held Thursday if Greece agreed on the implementation of so-called contingency measures and a reform package. The two sides have already agreed on “95 percent” of upfront measures equal to 3 percent of Greek GDP, according to Dijsselbloem, who is also finance minister for the Netherlands.

The International Monetary Fund is insisting Greece legislate contingency measures in order to unlock aid, something the nation has said is unconstitutional. Greece has made a counter-proposal, saying it would create a permanent budget correction mechanism, to be activated in case of deviations from targets. Talks in Athens on Tuesday between the Greek government and officials from the IMF, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Stability Mechanism failed to bridge differences.