EU's Tusk tells Greece in video to accept debt deal or 'head towards default'

PUBLISHED ON JUN 19, 2015 11:29 PM

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A young woman walks past a graffiti reading "Mrs Merkel we still love you - Greece" in central Athens on June 19, 2015. -- PHOTO: AFP

BRUSSELS (AFP) - EU president Donald Tusk told Greece to accept a debt deal with its international creditors or face defaulting as he prepared an emergency summit Monday on Athens’s future in the euro zone.

“The situation of Greece is getting critical,” Tusk said in a video message Friday.

“We are close to the point where the Greek government will have to choose between accepting what I believe is a good offer of continued support or to head towards default.”

Euro zone finance ministers meeting on Thursday in Luxembourg failed yet again to reach an accord with Greece on the painful reforms it must accept in return for a last tranche of bailout funding worth 7.2 billion euros.

Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won office in January on a promise to end years of damaging austerity, but international creditors insist Athens must do more in return for the needed funding if it is to meet a debt repayment of around 1.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund on June 30.

Tusk called Monday’s summit of the leaders of the 19 euro zone countries immediately after the Luxembourg talks failed, saying the issue now needed to be settled – and fast – at the political level.

Greece’s current debt bailout agreed with the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank, also ends June 30.

Tusk stressed on Friday how much time had been lost, saying months of negotiations “have not led to the necessary compromise... The game of chicken needs to end, and so does the blame game.”

“This is not a game and there is no time for any games. It is reality with real possible consequences, first and foremost for the Greek people,” he said in a video.

“At the end of the day, this is and can only be a Greek decision and a Greek responsibility. There is still time, but only a few days. Let us use them wisely.”