NEW YORK -
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said his country could return to bond
markets soon, if it reached a debt-restructuring deal with creditors in the
coming months, but warned that Europe’s migration crisis threatened efforts to
turn around Greece’s economy.
Talks on restructuring Greece’s staggering
debt load are expected to begin later this year, once a first review of the
country’s new bailout program is successfully completed.
Earlier this month, Mr. Tsipras and his
left-wing Syriza party secured an emphatic re-election victory that returned
him to the prime minister’s seat with the same antiestablishment coalition that
governed Greece through this year’s standoff, and eventual bailout deal, with
European creditors. The win now gives Mr. Tsipras a mandate to implement the
kind of painful austerity he was originally elected to fight against.
On Tuesday, he vowed to stick to the terms,
despite the fact that some of them, such as the tax increases, “will not have
positive results.” The 41-year-old prime minister has said that the deal was
necessary to avoid a catastrophic exit from the eurozone and that aspects of it
are an improvement to earlier bailout programs.
“The agreement for the first time has a
realistic approach; the adjustment is milder,” Mr. Tsipras said while in New
York for the United Nations General Assembly this week.
He added that the country was expected to
return to growth in the second half of 2016 but that Europe’s migration crisis
could harm its fragile economy - particularly its all-important tourism
industry. The country’s debt crisis has severely limited its ability to handle
the influx of migrants entering its borders.
“Our goal is to agree with our (European)
partners that if the situation deteriorates, the funds that Greece will spend
will be excluded from the calculation of the deficit,” Mr. Tsipras said,
referring to deficit targets agreed to under the bailout program.
About 350,000 refugees and other migrants
have entered Greece this year -70% of them since July. Half of them have first
landed on the island of Lesbos, while many others have arrived on other Greek
islands. As a result of the influx, such islands have seen a roughly 40%
decline in tourism revenues, officials say.
The Greek prime minister urged Europe to act
swiftly and show solidarity in responding to the crisis. “United Europe won
when the wall fell in Berlin,” he said. But “if now, we build walls in Europe,
this is not the Europe of our common future.”
Referring to Greece’s monthslong turbulent
negotiations with its creditors this year, Mr. Tsipras said that he had known
that the talks would be difficult. But he said he had been surprised by what he
said was an effort by extreme conservative forces within Europe to push Greece
out of the eurozone.
“I couldn’t believe [the German Finance
Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble wanted a division in Europe, but in the end he
did,” he said, adding that he has a more trusting relationship with the German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr. Tsipras also called on Europe to step up efforts
to achieve a diplomatic solution in Syria and urged the West not to leave
Russia out of such talks.
“If we want to discuss the perspective of
global stability and security, I think that it is a mistake to exclude Russia
from these discussions,” the Greek premier said. “That does not mean that we
agree with their strategy or all Russian policies.”
Πηγή: wsj.com
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