AFP, Brussels :
Greece submitted a promised reform plan to its EU-IMF creditors Tuesday, a day before Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to discuss how to end Athens’s debt crisis with the French and German leaders, European sources said.
Creditors “are now in the process of studying” the list of “counter-proposals”, which arrived two days after European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker complained Tsipras had not fulfilled a pledge made at a meeting last week to send Brussels the plans, one source told AFP.
One major Greek proposal was an idea, first floated by Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, for debt held by the hardline European Central Bank to be transferred to the eurozone’s crisis-fighting fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which is widely seen as softer, another source said.
The move would effectively delay two huge payments owed by Greece to the ECB this summer, allowing nearly-broke Athens urgently needed breathing space.
European sources also told AFP that Greece and its creditors were also debating a possible extension of its current eurozone bailout programme, which expires at the end of June, until March 2016.
The extension would be the third for Greece since last year and align it with the end of the IMF’s own bailout agreement with Athens, which has run in tandem with the EU and ECB programme.
