Priprave na trojko: Kako se je “pogajal” Ciper

Avtor: Jože P. Damijan. Precej dober opis in kronologija tega, kako so prejšnji teden potekala pogajanja med trojko in Ciprom sta zabeležena v torkovi izdaji Wall Street Journala. Ciprski politiki so blefirali do konca, vendar niso imeli dobrih kart. Niso jih mogli imeti. Nekaj minut pred polnočjo v nedeljo so morali pristati na vse pogoje trojke. Objavljam nekaj odlomkov v vednost, da se naša nova vladna ekipa lahko psihološko pripravi.

On Friday morning, Ms. Merkel’s patience was running out. She angrily briefed lawmakers from her ruling center-right coalition and told them Cyprus was trying to face Europe down, according to people present. Cypriot leaders haven’t understood yet that their “business model” of outsized offshore banking has failed, she said. Europe had to stick to its principles, she added: Aid is only for countries that were prepared to reform, she said, according to these people.

But the chancellor and her finance minister prepared to let Cyprus fail if it wouldn’t agree to terms, German officials say. “There can be no question of aid for countries that want to carry on merrily as before, and the Bundestag would never agree to that,” said a senior German official.

With this as the backdrop, the mood was running high Sunday in Brussels as key officials—including IMF chief Christine Lagarde, ECB head Mario Draghi, EU President Herman Van Rompuy and other EU leaders—met Mr. Anastasiades over a lunch of lamb and stuffed baby potatoes.

According to a senior Cypriot official, Mr. Anastasiades was appalled by the way he was being treated and spoken to at the lunch. When he threatened to resign, Mr. Dijsselbloem told him he didn’t care about the president’s political future, only the future of the euro zone.

Meanwhile, as EU leaders tried to calm Mr. Anastasiades and convince him to accept the need for radical surgery to Cypriot banks, his finance minister, Mr. Sarris, was negotiating an eight-point action list in another room with EU Commissioner Olli Rehn, ECB executive-board member Jörg Asmussen and Austrian official Thomas Wieser, who chairs the euro zone’s regular consultations among finance officials, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The Franco-German message: Mr. Anastasiades should give up hope that a summit of euro-zone leaders would lead to an easier deal. Even if a summit were called, the deal facing Cyprus would be the same one as now.

Shortly before midnight, the Cypriot president came back with a new proposal, which officials said once again backtracked on the closure of Cyprus Popular. At that point, the EU leaders calmly told Mr. Anastasiades “to pack up and leave” if he wasn’t ready to cooperate, one official present at the meeting said.

It was at that moment that the president gave the sign-off on the broad deal and euro-zone finance ministers finally got to spring into action. They drafted a statement summarizing the deal, but didn’t alter the details outlined in the annex.

“The reality is that all decisions had been taken before,” one official said. The upshot for Cyprus was an agreement that was more costly than the one its parliamentarians rejected last week.

“There is no doubt in the government that the first deal was far better,” said a senior Cypriot official. “We bluffed and we lost. The whole thing was a fiasco.”

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Vir: blog Jože P. Damijan