Greece debt crisis: EU chiefs at loggerheads hours before Alexis Tsipras’s last ditch deal proposals
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Version 0 of 1. EU leaders are divided over whether Greece will be able to salvage a deal at a European Union summit at 5pm today. In a speech to the European Parliament this morning, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said that his aim was to prevent Greece from leaving the Eurozone, even though a new deal would take time. "My aim is to prevent Grexit. I am against Grexit,” he said. In a press conference on Tuesday morning, Martin Shulz, the president of the European Parliament, agreed. “I’m in favour of keeping the eurozone together. Those who want to split up the eurozone are wrong,” he said. Not all politicians agree with this view. German CDU politician Klaus-Peter Willsch told the BBC that Greece should not stay within the EU. “At this moment, if you have Greece out of the euro, it will strengthen the euro,” he said. “I think we need to restructure the Eurozone so that countries can get out if they can’t take it any longer.” Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is reportedly staying away from the summit this evening. That’s not surprising – Greece is in arrears to the IMF after missing a €1.6 billion payment on June 25. |