The Greece debt crisis may have found a solution on Monday when Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to a new string of austerity measures and economic reforms in exchange for a bailout and keeping the country in the Eurozone.
Eurozone leaders met for hours in what The Guardian described as the longest summit in the European Union's history as the countries’ leaders tried to negotiate terms for Greece’s third bailout.
Tsipras agreed to pass laws to add new reforms to Greece's tax and pension system, open up its labor market, and restart closed professions, according to The Guardian. Greece's Sunday trading laws will be relaxed with additional deregulations for milk producers and bakers, as well.
If the changes are approved by Greece’s parliament in Athens by Wednesday, talks will begin for a new three-year bailout program that will be monitored by creditors, according to The Guardian.
Bloomberg Business wrote that the bailout could be worth 86 billion Euros, or $95 billion U.S. dollars.
Tsipras, whom officials described as a “beaten dog,” was forced to agree to many of the Eurozone leaders' demands, according to Bloomberg Business.
“The Greek government has accepted practically everything,” said Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Monday, according to Bloomberg Business. “It accepted all the crucial and important points.”
The Greek prime minister, however, had complained that there was little negotiation and called the summit more of “an inquisition."
“We found ourselves in front of difficult decisions and hard dilemmas,” Tsipras told reporters, according to Bloomberg. “We took the responsibility of the decision to avert the most extreme plans of the most extreme conservative forces in the European Union.”
The displeasure over the deal spilled over onto social media with the hashtag #ThisIsACoup, becoming the second top trender on Twitter globally as the negotiations stretched from
Sunday to Monday with no deal, according to Deutsche Welle.
Even liberal economist Paul Krugman re-tweeted this post on Sunday:
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