After delay, Greece to submit list of reforms to Eurogroup

Greece will submit a list of reforms to eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday morning, a day after the initial deadline, in hopes of securing an extension to the bailout program agreed to in Brussels on Friday.

The 19 eurozone finance ministers, known as the Eurogroup, had set a Monday deadline for Athens to supply the list, but a Greek official told Reuters that the proposals would reach Brussels on Tuesday instead.

That delay was a source of anxiety for some euro watchers nervous about finalizing the terms of the loan extensions, but the Greek official said the Eurogroup had agreed that the submission could be made on Tuesday instead.

Greek markets were closed Monday for a public holiday.

"The list of reforms will be sent to the finance ministers of the Eurogroup on Tuesday morning, while a teleconference will take place in the afternoon," the official said, raising hopes that the extension was on the verge of being finalized.

Without final agreement to extend the bailout, Greece’s current loans will dry up on Saturday.

The reforms list is expected to include measures to tackle Greece's "humanitarian crisis” of homelessness and high unemployment, end the foreclosure of homes and regulate tax debts and bad loans, the Greek official said. It will also include structural reforms to tackle tax evasion and corruption, fight fuel smuggling and restructure the public sector.

“I’d put my money on [approval] tomorrow,” an unnamed senior official who was party to the negotiations told the Financial Times.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has insisted that Greece achieved a negotiating success when eurozone finance ministers agreed to extend the current bailout deal.

Tsipras maintains he has the nation behind him, despite giving ground to Greece’s European creditors.

Under the deal, Greece will still live under the terms of the existing bailout, which exceeds $240 billion, for another four months. Greece wants to use that financial breathing room to then negotiate a new lending arrangement by early summer.

The existing bailout is overseen by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – previously known as the "troika” but called the “three institutions” in Friday’s deal.

"I want to say a heartfelt thanks to the majority of Greeks who stood by the Greek government ... That was our most powerful negotiating weapon," Tsipras said on Saturday. "Greece achieved an important negotiating success in Europe."

Tsipras declared Greece was "leaving austerity, the bailouts and the troika behind.” Nevertheless, "the three institutions" must still approve the government plans on Tuesday. The extension also seems to contradict Syriza campaign pledges to end the bailout, though after June, Athens may be able to arrange a new lending program that satisfies the Greek public and Syriza coalition members.

Despite bending to many Eurogroup demands, Friday’s deal eased apprehension that Greece could leave the eurozone — the feared “Grexit" — and averted a possible run on Greek banks and the country’s free-fall into insolvency. 

But not all members of Tsipras’s Syriza party, a broad coalition of the left, were as sanguine about the terms of Friday’s agreement.

Veteran leftist and Syriza party member Manolis Glezos attacked the deal as failure to fulfill campaign promises. "I apologize to the Greek people because I took part in this illusion," he wrote on his blog. He said the extension of the current bailout package for another four months had merely changed the semantics, not the underlying terms, including the composition of the bailout monitors and the original agreement. “By renaming the troika ‘the institutions,’ the memorandum as ‘agreement’ and the lenders as ‘partners’ ... you do not change the previous situation,” he wrote.

Glezos, a Syriza member of the European Parliament, is not considered a party heavyweight, but he commands moral authority: As a young man under the World War II occupation, he scaled the Acropolis to rip down a Nazi flag under the noses of German guards and hoist the Greek flag, making him a national hero.

His decision to break ranks drew an abrupt response from the government. "Manolis Glezos is someone whom we will never cease to honor," said Greek government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis. "But ... I believe that yesterday's statement in particular was misguided and wrong."

Al Jazeera and Reuters. With additional reporting by Tom Kutsch.