DHAKA: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and new finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos are expected to present new proposals to Greece’s creditors at a eurozone emergency summit Tuesday in Brussels aimed at preventing Greece’s exit from the eurozone.

The new Greek plan reportedly includes a demand for Greece’s debt to be cut by up to 30 percent in exchange for new concessions on structural reforms and budget cuts.

Athens has been urged to make ‘serious’ proposals as Greece risks defaulting on its €323 billion debt.

Speaking after an urgent summit in Paris on Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the importance of Greece taking ‘responsibility’ for implementing serious reform, adding that the prerequisite conditions for a new rescue package ‘have not yet been met’.

‘And that is why we are now waiting for very precise proposals from the Greek prime minister, a program that will allow Greece to return to prosperity,’ she said. Germany is the eurozone’s largest economy followed by France.

French President François Hollande echoed what many eurozone leaders have been saying in stressing that it was Greece’s responsibility to make the next move.

‘It is now up to the government of Alexis Tsipras to make serious, credible proposals so that this willingness to stay in the eurozone can translate into a lasting program,’ Hollande said.

BDST: 1654 HRS, JULY 07, 2015
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