Euro Zone leaders humiliate Greece with new bailout deal

Greece’s deal with its creditors has kept the country in the European Union, Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, said after euro zone leaders agreed to a new86 billion euro bailout programme.

But it is a deal that will make proud Greece surrender its sovereignty to outside supervision, which Malta Prime minister describes as ‘humiliating’.

“We faced difficult decisions and hard dilemmas”, Tsipras said in Athens on arrival from Brussels on Monday.

According to him, the deal achieved after marathon talks in Brussels is the best possible.

“The measures will inevitably create recessionary trends, but the growth package, the restructuring of debt and secured funding for the next three years will mean that `Grexit’ is past,’’ Tsipras said.

According to Reuters, the terms imposed by international lenders led by Germany in all-night talks at an emergency summit obliged leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to abandon promises of ending austerity and could fracture his government and cause an outcry in Greece.

“Clearly the Europe of austerity has won,” Greece’s Reform Minister George Katrougalos said.

“Either we are going to accept these draconian measures or it is the sudden death of our economy through the continuation of the closure of the banks. So it is an agreement that is practically forced upon us,” he told BBC radio.

Greece however aims to reopen its banks on Thursday, bankers said. Facing a wave of withdrawals, the banks closed two weeks ago.

If the summit on Greece’s third bailout had failed, Athens would have been staring into an economic abyss with its banks on the brink of collapse and the prospect of having to print a parallel currency and exit the euro.

“The agreement was laborious, but it has been concluded. There is no Grexit,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a news conference after 17 hours of bargaining.

He dismissed suggestions that Tsipras had been humiliated even though the summit statement insisted repeatedly that Greece must now subject much of its public policy to prior agreement by bailout monitors.