Greece Faces August Deadline After Tsipras Meets Creditor Terms

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s 4 a.m. win in Parliament sets the clock ticking on yet another make-or-break deadline: Aug. 20, when Greece will need to wrap up a new bailout in order to make a payment to the European Central Bank.

The measures taken by Greece satisfied the terms required by the nation’s creditors, according to a European Commission spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified because the talks are ongoing. Greece has to pay about 3.2 billion euros ($3.5 billion) to the ECB on Aug. 20.

Passage of the laws paves the way for the so-called Troika of institutions to return to Athens to negotiate terms for as much as 86 billion euros in aid, which would be the nation’s third financial rescue in five years. Tsipras, who echoed the rhetoric of the predecessors he once accused of betraying their country, said he’ll implement the program even though he thinks the policies being imposed are wrong.

“Conservative forces within Europe still insist on their plans to kick Greece out of the euro,” Tsipras told legislators in the early hours of Thursday. “We chose a compromise that forces us to implement a program we don’t believe in and we will implement it, because the choices we have are tough.”

Bloomberg

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