Greece

Leaders of the hard-left faction of Greece’s Syriza party have called for a “rupture” with creditors in a public challenge to Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, as he moves closer to a new bailout deal, the Financial Times reported. The rebels include five members of Syriza’s political bureau and Central Committee led by John Milios, a former shadow finance minister.

In a related story, the International New York Times reported that Greece, having endured five years of economic austerity, is now reeling from a different condition: economic uncertainty. No one knows if Greece’s government, led by the radical left Syriza party, will strike a new deal with European creditors — or if the country will default on its debts, setting off a new crisis. Even if a deal is cut, no one knows what it will look like, whether the Greek Parliament will pass it, or whether a deal will bring a new iteration of austerity and hardship for ordinary Greeks.

Greece on Thursday offered a concession to its international lenders by pushing ahead with the sale of its biggest port, Piraeus. Greece has asked three firms to submit bids for a majority stake in the port, a senior privatisation official said, unblocking a major sale of a public asset as the EU and the IMF demand economic reforms from Athens. Despite the conciliatory move, Germany’s Bundesbank showed no sign of easing off on its hardline stance towards Greece.

Europe’s top banking supervisor said Greek lenders have never been better equipped to deal with the country’s financial crisis, in a show of confidence in the debt-laden state’s banks, which have been stressed by fleeing deposits and political uncertainty in recent months. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Daniele Nouy, the chairwoman of the Single Supervisory Mechanism—the European Central Bank’s bank-supervisory arm—said Greek banks are demonstrating significant resilience. She said the SSM is monitoring their liquidity and solvency positions very closely.

By now it has become familiar: Greece warns that it is about to run out of cash, then manages to scrape together enough to avoid defaulting on its debts. A larger catastrophe is averted in the eurozone, and Greece and its creditors return to haggling over whether the country can get more financial aid, the International New York Times reported. That sequence played out again this week, when Greece managed on Tuesday to make a loan payment of about 750 million euros, or about $837 million, to the International Monetary Fund.

Greece’s finance ministry ordered a €750m payment to the International Monetary Fund, ending days of uncertainty over whether Athens would use the instalment as a bargaining chip in ongoing talks with its creditors, the Financial Times reported. Ministry officials said they had sent a payment order to the government’s national accounts office to ensure it would arrive in the IMF’s coffers by Tuesday, when the loan repayment falls due. “The order to pay has been made,” said one finance ministry official.

Greek leaders have fought fiercely in recent months with politicians from other European countries over relief on Greece’s vast debt load, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Yet the power to decide the fate of Greece lies not just in the hands of these national governments, but also with unelected officials at two powerful institutions: the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Each is a creditor to Greece, and each is expecting the country to repay it billions of dollars of debt in the coming weeks. The influence of the E.C.B.

There have been so many “make-or-break” moments for Athens since Greece’s debt crisis first shook markets five years ago,that it is difficult to know when things might really break, the Financial Times reported. But this much is clear: unless Greece and its international creditors agree a deal soon to close out the country’s €172bn bailout, and then quickly agree another rescue, Athens is likely to run out of money and default on its debts. That would push it perilously close to crashing out of the eurozone.

The European Central Bank will decide after next week’s meeting of euro region finance ministers whether to tighten Greek access to emergency liquidity, two people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The ECB is prepared to raise the discount demanded on Greek collateral to a level last seen in 2014 unless the country’s government shows a willingness to compromise in bailout talks, said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. An ECB spokesman declined to comment.

Greece blamed its creditors for the failure to end the impasse over its fiscal crisis as government bonds slumped and the European Central Bank weighs how much more liquidity to offer its financial system, Bloomberg News reported. No deal will be possible until the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund reduce the number of red lines they’re demanding, a government official said on Tuesday. The comments clouded the outlook for bailout talks, which some officials had said were making progress, and accelerated a selloff in the country’s stocks and bonds.