Greece submits fresh plan on eve of EU emergency summit

ATHENS, Greece - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras presented new proposals to European leaders Sunday aimed at ending his country's debt crisis, on the eve of a summit that could determine whether Greece crashes out of the eurozone.

In a telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Tsipras detailed a "mutually beneficial deal", the Greek premier's office said in a statement.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi urged the two sides to seize a "window of opportunity", saying all conditions were in place for them to reach a "win-win accord".

Athens said its new proposals were aimed at reaching a "definitive solution" to the five-month standoff between Athens and its creditors -- the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank -- as fears deepened over a potential "Grexit" from the eurozone.

The heads of the 19 eurozone countries will hold an emergency summit on the crisis in Brussels on Monday under pressure to prevent Greece from defaulting on its debt with a June 30 payment deadline fast approaching.

Sanity will prevail

The head of Greece's biggest bank said she thought "sanity will prevail" on Monday.

"To enter into such uncharted waters and take up all the risk both for the eurozone and for Greece for two or three billion (euro) difference, I think it's insane," National Bank of Greece chief Louka Katseli told BBC radio.

Greece's anti-austerity government met Sunday to refine its proposals, while a European source said Tsipras and Juncker "held talks Saturday and will again speak Sunday", adding that there were many exchanges and "informal work under way to find a solution".

Failing a deal, Greece is likely to default on an IMF debt payment of around 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) due on June 30, setting up a potentially chaotic exit from the eurozone.

Last Wednesday the Greek central bank put the risk in stark terms saying: "Failure to reach an agreement would... mark the beginning of a painful course that would lead initially to a Greek default and ultimately to the country's exit from the euro area and -– most likely -– from the European Union."

The IMF was called in to help rescue Greece at the end of 2009 when the debt-plagued country could no longer borrow on international markets.

The EU's involvement in the huge bailout, which was to provide 240 billion euros ($270 billion) in loans in exchange for drastic austerity measures and reforms, runs out at the end of this month, but IMF support was supposed to continue to March 2016.

Talks between Greece's radical-left government and its lenders have been deadlocked for five months over the payment of the final 7.2 billion euro tranche of the bailout, with talk also turning to an extension of the European help.

For the Greek government any extension of the bailout should be about kickstarting the country's devastated economy and not further austerity.

They also want an easing of the country's crippling debt burden, which officially stood at 312.7 billion euros, or 174.7 percent of gross domestic product, in March.

The international lenders have rejected a series of proposals from Athens, insisting on their own mixture of cuts and reforms.

Minister of state Nikos Pappas, who is close to Tsipras, said the counter-proposals would be "unacceptable to whichever Greek political party" was in power.

Bridging the gap

Alekos Flambouraris, another Tsipras minister, said Saturday that Athens would propose reworked measures that "bridge the gap", while also predicting that Greece's creditors would not be satisfied with the gestures, Greek media reported.

"You'll see they won't accept loosening budget (restrictions), or our proposal on the debt," he said of two main sticking points in the talks.

But the country's Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose flamboyant style has irked many of his European counterparts, turned the tables by putting the onus on the leader of paymaster Germany to do a deal.

"The German chancellor has a clear decision to make on Monday," he wrote in an op-ed for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"On our side, we will come with determination to Brussels to agree to further compromises as long as we are not asked to do what the previous (Greek) governments have done: accept new debt under conditions that offer little hope for Greece to repay its debts," he wrote, without specifying the compromises.

Demonstrators around Europe on Saturday took to the streets to protest against spending cuts and austerity measures taken by their governments, and expressing solidarity with Greece.

source: interaksyon.com

Cutting smoking saves more in health bills than lost tax: EU

RUSSELS - The cost and health benefits of getting people not to smoke and better still, not to start, more than outweigh the taxes the tobacco industry pays to governments, the European Commission said Monday.

Irish Health Minister James Reilly, presenting the EU's new draft tobacco law in the European parliament, said smokers paid some 20 billion euros ($26.4 billion) annually in tax but health costs associated with smoking came to 23 billion euros.

On top of that were another eight billion euros in lost production and other costs due to smokers' higher rates of sickness, leading to days off and lower efficiency.

It is a "no-brainer, ethically and economically," Reilly told parliament, dismissing out of hand the argument that tobacco is too important economically to be tampered with.

EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg made the same point, noting that some 700,000 people die prematurely as a result of smoking each year -- equal to a city about the size of Frankfurt in Germany.

The new tobacco directive, which parliament and all 27 member states will have to approve, aims simply to save those lives, Borg said, adding that the legislation needed to be brought up to date as the industry introduces new products, especially those targeting the young.

"Tobacco should look and taste like tobacco," Borg said, holding up new products brightly colored and looking like lipstick or perfume so as to attract younger people.

Accordingly, the directive stipulates that 75 percent of a cigarette package must carry health warnings, and that certain "characterizing" flavors such as vanilla or menthol be banned.

"My aim is that when people look at a tobacco product they realize that it will damage their health," Borg said.

In January, thousands of tobacconists from across Europe marched on European Union headquarters to protest against the planned directive which will take about three years to come into effect once passed.

source: interaksyon.com