Greek prime minister rules out third bailout

Greece’s new radical left government has no intention of seeking another bailout deal from international creditors and will spend coming months trying to ease the terms of its current commitments, the financially struggling country’s prime minister said Friday. Alexis Tsipras remarks came hours after lawmakers in Germany, a key rescue loan provider, overwhelmingly approved the four-month extension of Greece’s extant deal.

The bailout agreements are over, both in form and in essence. Some people are betting on a third bailout in June … but we will disappoint them.

Alexis Tsipras

Tsipras’ radical left Syriza party, which is governing in coalition with the small right-wing Independent Greeks, was elected a month ago on a highly ambitious platform of cancelling the austerity measures that accompanied Greece’s 240 billion euro ($270 billion) rescue loans. But despite repeated and often unorthodox attempts to win over other European creditor countries, Greece was forced to retreat from initial electoral promises that included a massive new write-down of the country’s crushing debt. Last week, fellow members of the 19-member eurozone agreed on the four-month loan agreement extension, in return for which Greece offered a fluid commitment to budget reforms. Tsipras said his first act of legislation would be to table a draft law on Monday to address what Syriza calls the “humanitarian crisis” — extensive poverty brought about by the deep income cuts and shockingly high unemployment resulting from creditor-mandated cutbacks.

This is our foremost duty toward a society that has been severely tried for five years.

Alexis Tsipras

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