Ministers say Athens sent new proposals too late to consider before crisis summit.
The mood among his peers was grim before the hastily convened meetings of ministers and leaders Monday, after Athens sent two draft proposals on Sunday night and Monday morning — too late for ministers or the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund to study them in detail before their talks.
“We all came here for a meeting that really has no chance at an agreement because the documents weren’t ready,” Austrian Finance Minister Hans Jörg Schelling said before the meeting. “This could have really been done more professionally.”
“The situation for me is the same as on last Thursday,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told reporters in Brussels, referring to last week’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers, which failed to find a resolution.
He angrily criticized Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s cabinet chief, Martin Selmayr, for tweeting on Sunday evening that Brussels had received new economic reform proposals from the Greek government. “Good basis for progress at tomorrow’s EuroSummit,” Selmayr wrote, before invoking the graphic German expression — “Zangengeburt,” or delivery by forceps.
Schäuble added: “It shouldn’t be that some unauthorized person over the weekend is creating expectations. It has to be a serious review.”
It was an unpromising start to a week of top-level meetings in Brussels to thrash out a Greek economic reform deal with just a week to go before Athens must pay back €1.6 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund — the same day that its second bailout package expires.
Schäuble’s impatience with the deadlocked cash-for-reform negotiations echoes IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who said on Thursday that a resolution was only possible “with adults in the room.”
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan, the elder statesman of the Eurogroup, had said before the meeting there were “very low expectations … It’s the function of the Eurogroup to prepare the meeting for the heads. With such confusions during the night, with alternative versions of the Greek proposals coming in, there hasn’t been any of that preparation.”
Ryan Heath contributed to this article.
