Greece counts down to default after Tsipras slams EU demands as ‘unreasonable’

Greece has become deadlocked with its international creditors just days before a potential default as its leaders were accused of “playing with the future of the country”.

Meanwhile Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said that Greece was not to blame for the lack of a deal. In an op-ed in French paper Le Monde this weekend, he blamed “the obsession of some institutional representatives who insist on unreasonable solutions and are being indifferent to the democratic result of recent Greek elections”.

The debt-laden nation must pay back €304m (£218m) in loans due to the International Monetary Fund on Friday, but is struggling to reach a deal with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF needed to unlock €7.2bn in vital funds due under its second bailout in 2012.

Particularly Close to Germany

Do you still question who runs Europe? Guess who’s back.

BERLIN/BRUSSELS (Own report) – With Jean-Claude Juncker, Germany will have a politician as President of the EU Commission, who has always been a close ally. Juncker says that “since his earliest youth,” he has “always felt particularly close” to Germany, an affinity that “grew even stronger” in later years. The former prime minister of Luxemburg is seen as former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s protégé and as the “mediator” in Germany’s interests, wherein he had also won France over to accept Germany’s standpoint on an economic and monetary union. The transition from the Barroso cabinet to that of Juncker will be coordinated by the German national, Martin Selmayr, who had previously been employed as cabinet director of the EU Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, (Luxemburg) and was considered to “actually be the Commissioner of Justice.” He is also considered to become cabinet director of Juncker’s office as President of the Commission. Germans are at decisive posts on the Council of Ministers as well as in the European Parliament, for example as parliamentary group whips, and the German national, Martin Schulz is being considered for the next presidency of the parliament. An influential German journal commented the concentration of Germans at the leadership level of the EU’s bureaucracy with “The EU speaks German.”