“La sabiduría de la vida consiste en la eliminación de lo no esencial. En reducir los problemas de la filosofía a unos pocos solamente: el goce del hogar, de la vida, de la naturaleza, de la cultura”.
Lin Yutang
Cervantes
Hoy es el día más hermoso de nuestra vida, querido Sancho; los obstáculos más grandes, nuestras propias indecisiones; nuestro enemigo más fuerte, el miedo al poderoso y a nosotros mismos; la cosa más fácil, equivocarnos; la más destructiva, la mentira y el egoísmo; la peor derrota, el desaliento; los defectos más peligrosos, la soberbia y el rencor; las sensaciones más gratas, la buena conciencia, el esfuerzo para ser mejores sin ser perfectos, y sobretodo, la disposición para hacer el bien y combatir la injusticia dondequiera que esté.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quijote de la Mancha.
La Colmena no se hace responsable ni se solidariza con las opiniones o conceptos emitidos por los autores de los artículos.
18 de junio de 2015
EU Calls Emergency Summit as Greece Runs Out of Time
Christine
Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
right, speaks with Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's finance minister, during a
Eurogroup meeting in Luxembourg, on June 18, 2015.
Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg
Euro-area leaders will hold an emergency summit in Brussels on Monday
to try and force a settlement on Greece after finance ministers’ efforts
failed on Thursday.
There’s no chance that the Greek government will receive any
financial aid before its euro-area bailout expires and it has to pay the
International Monetary Fund about 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) at
the end of the month, Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem told
reporters. Greece will need an extension of its bailout agreement if
it’s to receive any money, he added.
I have decided to convene a Euro Summit Monday. Time to discuss the situation of Greece at highest political level http://t.co/dF16o6knNg
Asked if he could
imagine Greece being forced out of the euro, Dijsselbloem said, “The way
it goes now we’re going in that direction.”
Four hours of closed-door talks in Luxembourg amid conflicting
reports of progress failed to break the deadlock between Greece and its
creditors forcing the currency bloc’s leaders to step in. Without a
settlement, the ties still binding Greece to the euro may begin to
unravel with emergency funding for the banking system under review and
the risk of capital controls mounting.
“It is time to urgently discuss the situation of Greece at the
highest political level,” European Union President Donald Tusk said in a
statement. The summit will start at 7 p.m. on June 22.
While Greece still has 12 days left before the bailout window shuts,
the need for some parliaments to sign off on any agreement the ministers
can broker means it’s already too late for them to access aid in time
for the IMF payment, Dijsselbloem said.
Greeks protest outside the parliament in Athens on June 18, against the
government and in support of the country's membership in the euro area.
The rally took place as a euro area finance ministers meeting in
Luxembourg ended in acrimony.
Photographer: Nikos Chrysoloras /Bloomberg
“Let’s
say that we do reach an agreement, it’s unthinkable that the
implementation and then disbursement will also have to take place before
the end of the month,” Dijsselbloem said. “That is simply impossible.”
Pro-Euro Demonstrations
No deal at #Eurogroup. Strong signal for #Greece to engage seriously in negotiations. EG stands ready to reconvene at any moment.
As the meeting in Luxembourg was coming to an end,
thousands of Greeks protested against their government’s stance outside
the parliament in Athens, demanding the country cling on to its
membership in the euro area. “Hellas, Europe, Democracy,” the protesters
shouted, swarming past the presidential guards to wave Greek and EU
flags on the steps on the parliament building.
A Greek government official in Athens said that Greece won’t be
blackmailed. Greece aims to stay calm and decisive in the face of plots
that are attempting to trigger capital flight and destabilize the
country’s economic and financial system, the official said.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said he had made a new and
credible offer to its creditors and refused to discuss the possibility
of failure. All the same, he said Greece’s creditors were pushing the
country “dangerously close” to an accident.
“The key emergency is to secure a dialogue with adults in the room,”
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said after listening to
Varoufakis’s exposition. “What we lack is a dialogue.”
Ministers Despairing
The depth of the impasse left several ministers doubting whether any deal can be reached.
“Everybody remains hopeful but I honestly don’t believe that anything
will happen,” Maltese Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said in an
interview after the meeting. “Nobody however, wants to pull the plug.”
“I always believed that at the end of the day we could find some kind
of deal,” his Finnish counterpart Alexander Stubb said. “I think we
have come pretty much to a dead end.”
