08/07 – Outcome of the Eurozone summit of Tuesday 7/7

The leaders of the euro area member states discussed the situation in Greece following the referendum held on 5 July.

After the meeting President of the Euro Summit Donald Tusk confirmed that the euro area authorities were ready to do all that is necessary to ensure the financial stability in the euro area.

New request for the ESM assistance

Following the referendum Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras committed to present a new request for financial assistance from the European Stability Mechanism.

According to the ESM rules and the EU treaties, financial assistance to member states is provided under strict conditions. Greece’s previous arrangement with the European Financial Stability Facility expired on 30 June 2015.

The leaders will urgently work on ways to find a basis for an agreement that would respect both the existing commitments and the common rules.

All sides of the negotiations share the responsibility for the current status quo. That is why today I called on all leaders to try to find consensus, which will be our common success, with no losers or winners.

Reform agenda

The Greek government is expected to submit its proposals for a comprehensive and specific reform agenda by 9 July at the latest.

The proposal will be assessed by the three institutions (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and the outcome of the analysis presented to the Eurogroup.

Earlier there had been a meeting of Eurozone Finance Ministers. J. Dijsselbloem said after the Eurogroup meeting of 7 July 2015
“We welcomed our new Greek colleague and listened to his assessment of the situation after the “No” vote in Greece. There were no new proposals at this point from the Greek minister, and the first step will be that the Greek government will send the Eurogroup a new request; a new request letter for ESM support and as soon as this comes in – hopefully already tomorrow morning – we will have another Eurogroup conference call to formally start the process of dealing with this request.

I will first ask the institutions to look at the financial situation in Greece, their finances and debt sustainability, and then the institutions will come back to us and we will see if we can formally start the negotiations. All this has to be done in a matter of days. We have very little time, as you are all aware”.