Greece bailout talks – the main actors in a modern-day epic / The Syriza-led coalition’s long fight to end years of austerity by striking a deal with the troika is nearing its end. Here are the main players of the eurozone crisis. / GUARDIAN.

Greece bailout talks – the main actors in a modern-day epic

The Syriza-led coalition’s long fight to end years of austerity by striking a deal with the troika is nearing its end. Here are the main players of the eurozone crisis

Phillip Inman in London Ian Traynor in Brussels Helena Smith in Athens

Tuesday 9 June 2015 22.03 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/09/greece-bailout-talks-the-main-actors-in-a-modern-day-epic

Greece is almost entirely friendless as it enters the final phase of talks over a multibillion-pound rescue deal. The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, was elected to end austerity, but he has no money and few allies.

Athens has tried for the last four months to reverse six years of post-crash austerity policies while extracting a better deal from the EU – and in the process has upset almost everybody who might have had the power and inclination to help.

If Tsipras has any friends left in the eurozone, they are a diminishing bunch, and to be found mainly in Brussels rather than in the national capitals. Sympathy for the radical leftist Syriza-led government, which was never overwhelming, has shrunk sharply and turned into undisguised hostility.

Greece owes €320bn (£234bn) to the European commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank following bailouts in 2010 and 2012. The troika of lenders insisted on a broad set of reforms and public spending cuts as the price for the loans under a programme that ran out in February and was extended until the end of June.

Earlier this week, world leaders joined their EU counterparts to demand that Athens accept the need for painful sacrifices to secure further rescue funds. They hinted that by not agreeing to most of the existing demands, the economy could go bust and the country bundled out of the eurozone.

This coordinated attack by the US president, Barack Obama, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, François Hollande, revealed a new resolve to face down the radicals and leftists in Athens.

Tsipras, who leads a loose collection of socialists, communists and Trotskyists propelled into office on a wave of anti-austerity feeling, is running out of options. All the signs are now that he will be forced to accept during talks over the coming days much of what he rejected only last weekend as “illogical”.

Last week, Athens delayed loan payments to the IMF and the Greek leader now has until the end of the month to negotiate a deal. But all the betting is that it will come sooner rather than risk a late scramble that in turn could trigger a bank run and an accidental “Grexit”.

If opinion polls are to be believed, optimism is waning among the Greeks that Tsipras can secure a worthwhile compromise. Greeks want an end to austerity while remaining inside the eurozone. But the other 18 members of the currency bloc want Athens to accept that it cannot continue with its bloated public sector and generous pension system if new loans are to be forthcoming. Not that Syriza’s support has declined since it won the election in January with 35% of the vote.

It is this shift in public opinion and a unified front by creditors that prompted Tsipras to tell Syriza MPs on Tuesday that they must back whatever deal his negotiators secure. Any sense that the 70 members of the Left Platform faction within Syriza will vote against a deal is expected to force Tsipras to call a general election.

The only chink in the creditors’ resolve can be found in the European commission, the most dovish part of the troika. The previous commission, in office until last November, had been marginalised in the eurozone crisis and treated with contempt by the Germans and the French, which ran negotiations with Athens.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the new commission chief, came into office determined to make himself a player on the Greece crisis and has used the ascent of Syriza to bolster that aim. The same applied to his monetary affairs commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, a French socialist, who has consistently taken a softer line on Greece.

That relationship has gone sour, however, with Juncker accusing Tsipras at the weekend of lying to him and reneging on their agreements.

Outside Brussels, Tsipras has no friends. The frustration with the Greeks has only grown over the past five months of talks that have rolled full circle to an impasse.

Eastern European leaders in Slovakia, Slovenia or the Baltic have become increasingly critical and more outspoken about the Greeks, disinclined to listen to Greek complaints of pay cuts and denuded public services when they have gone through equally wrenching economic reforms themselves.

The conservative Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy has grown increasingly hostile, not least because it is running scared of Syriza’s lookalikes, Podemos, in domestic politics and ahead of elections in November.

Critics of the Greek negotiating stance have argued that it was naive to believe that – even though austerity policies had failed to stabilise the economy or spur growth – mainstream eurozone politicians were likely to make a U-turn and hand political opponents in Greece a stunning political victory.

Alexis Tsipras – the Greek leader

The Greek prime minister and leader of Syriza. Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

He has gone back on almost every promise he made but even now Greece’s youngest premier remains extraordinarily popular.

The robust defence of Greece that his leftist-led government has put up since assuming power in January has restored a sense of pride at a time of extraordinary humiliation for the population.

A civil engineering student who spent much of his college years organising sit-ins, the Greek prime minister is variously referred to by his friends as charming, charismatic and visionary. He plays good cop while his emissary, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, plays the bad boy. The leader’s demagogic skills – and canniness on the political stage – are such that even opponents acknowledge he has made the best of a weak hand.

The young leader has managed to pull off the extraordinary feat of cosying up to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, while accusing creditors of seeking a new deal that is “illogical” and “absurd”.

Panagiotis Lafazanis – the Greek rebel

Panagiotis Lafazanis

Pro-Russian, anti-capitalist and with a penchant for incendiary rhetoric, Lafazanis is widely perceived as Alexis Tsipras’s greatest foe domestically.

As head of Syriza’s radical Left Platform, the 63-year-old hardliner rails frequently against the ills of neoliberalism and capitalism itself.

Although he has softened his view on a euro exit – adopting, if hesitantly, the party’s official stance that Athens must remain in the single currency – he has stepped up criticism of lenders, whom he has accused of trying to “tear Greece apart”. Ideologically unyielding, unpredictable and testy, Lafazanis, who is also energy minister – is likely to become more vocal in his opposition to policies being demanded of Greece.

When it comes to a vote in parliament on a compromise deal, there is speculation that he will lead a revolt, forcing Tsipras to rely on moderate and rightwing parties to secure victory. Which is why Tsipras is considering a general election as a better way to keep his party together and resolve the dispute with Brussels.

Yanis Varoufakis – the Greek finance minister

Academic-turned politician Yanis Varoufakis. Photograph: Yannis Kolesidis/EPA

Just when everyone thought Greece’s maverick finance minister had been sidelined for good, Varoufakis is back, appearing as the public face of the anti-austerity government abroad.

The rhetoric has been toned down – along with the dress code: he now leans more towards sombre suits than leather jacket. The Athens rumour mill says Tsipras is enormously dependent on the academic-turned politician – without doubt the government’s most prominent public intellectual.

The 54-year-old has exerted considerable influence on reining in Tsipras – and changing his views on the perils of eurozone exit. His purported expression of support for “70% of the [troika’s] reform proposals” has earned him enemies in Syriza – a party he does not officially belong to.

In talks with eurozone finance ministers and Brussels officials, tolerance has worn thin over his penchant for interminable lectures on the nature of capitalism and Europe’s mistaken austerity experiment. Far from capitulating to a mix of charm and Keynesian economic theory, Brussels has stuck to its line: austerity is the only way.

Manolis Glezos – the Greek conscience

At 93, he is by far Europe’s oldest MP, but age has not daunted Glezos nor his status as a legendary figurehead of the left.

After playing a seminal role in Tsipras’s political coming-of-age, the second world war hero who shot to fame tearing down the swastika from the Acropolis has led the cry of resistance to austerity in the European parliament.

Universally respected, Glezos has openly criticised Syriza for making concessions – criticism that is bound to get louder in the weeks ahead.

If the governing party strays too far from its pre-electoral mandate the sprightly white-haired nonagenarian will rally dissidents.

Yannis Dragasakis – the righthand man

The deputy prime minister, Yannis Dragasakis. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

A former Communist party MP, Dragasakis, 67, is the only minister to have previous experience in government. Outwardly mild-mannered, he hides a steely demeanour that should not be mistaken for capitulation.

As deputy PM and the politician overseeing economic policy, this low-key player is the point man in negotiations with creditors.

Although he believes that Greece has been stripped of its sovereignty after five years of stewardship under the EU and IMF, Dragasakis is the man who pulls the strings behind the scenes.

A blackboard, depicting the (shifting) relationships between the various negotiating teams, has pride of place in his office.

Euclid Tsakalotos – the negotiator

Courteous and courtly, the British-educated Tsakalotos has won plaudits for taking the heat out of negotiations since becoming chief coordinator. Many see him as the perfect antidote to the outspoken Varoufakis.

But, Tsakalotos, who studied economics at Oxford and has written several books, is not willing to compromise on what he regards as the “irrational” demands of creditors.

A stickler for detail, the economics professor regards austerity as the breeding ground for the centrifugal forces that “in a straight re-run of the 1930s” could, he fears, tear Europe apart.

He leads the talks with state minister Nikos Pappas, who is a close ally of Tsipras.

Panos Kammenos – the coalition partner

Leader of the Independent Greeks, Syriza’s coalition partners, Panos Kammenos is a renowned populist.

Anti-euro, anti-immigration and anti-German, one of his hobby horses is the need for Berlin to pay war reparations. Only last week a parliamentary committee backed claims that Germany should pay €279bn (£205bn) compensation for Nazi war atrocities.

A former deputy shipping minister who broke away from the New Democracy party of the former prime minister Antonis Samaras in 2012, he has described the 2010 and 2012 financial bailouts as reducing Greece to the status of a debt colony.

The Acropolis

A symbol of the country’s glorious past and of modern democracy, the Acropolis gives the Greek negotiating position huge moral strength. How, pro-Europeans ask, could Greece be ejected from the federalist single currency project and the eurozone still claim to be indivisible.

The eurozone’s image and its cohesion would be irreparably damaged should the Acropolis come to represent the failure of EU institutions and not their success, say many observers.

Tsipras and Varoufakis have always aimed for a political deal born of a deep reluctance among the Brussels elite for letting go one of their children, even if Athens currently suffers from an oppositional disorder.

The Greek people

A general election is looming in Greece only six months after the last one as the new government in Athens is confronted by declining optimism in its ability to secure a good deal.

In April a large majority of Greeks wanted Athens to reach a compromise deal with its foreign lenders to avoid being forced out of the eurozone. A poll found that 72% wanted an agreement with Greece’s creditors, against 23% who said the government should refuse any compromise. A month later and support for a compromise had plummeted to 45%.

But 75% still wanted to stay in the eurozone, while almost two in five support early elections to resolve the standoff over the cash-for-reforms deal.

IMF/Brussels staff

Plenty of senior insiders have quietly voiced support for the Greek negotiating position while rejecting the bull-in-a-china-shop negotiating tactics.

Mostly, they concede that economic arguments put by Varoufakis – that austerity has made the situation worse and reforms will take time – are largely valid.

In April, Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF’s European department, became one of the few to openly voice his discontent at the stance taken by European finance ministers, who he said should reduce and simplify their demands on Greece.

Angela Merkel

Until recently the German leader followed the hard line established by her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Now she stands accused of wavering in her resolve. Her critics suggest thather search for a peace deal with the radical leftists running Greece could be intended to be part of establishing a legacy.

Alongside the potential division of Ukraine and the possibility of Britain quitting the European Union, a Grexit is something that must be averted to preserve her reputation as one of Germany’s great chancellors.

President Barack Obama

The US has hardened its attitude to Greece over recent months. In February US Treasury staff were berating Brussels for failing to make concessions and wrap up a deal.

Officials, concerned that jitters on international money markets would undermine business confidence and hit exports, were desperate for European policymakers to end austerity.

Lately, the US has blamed Athens for much of the delay. In April, Obama met Varoufakis and brusquely informed him that he needed to stop lecturing Brussels and sign a deal.

At the G7 summit on Monday, Obama said the Greeks needed to make sacrifices, “not only to satisfy creditors, but also to create a platform where the Greek economy can start growing again and prospering”.

He then gave Athens a clear nudge: “The Greeks are going to have to follow through and take some tough political choices that are going to be good in the long term.”

Enda Kenny

The Irish prime minister was considered a natural ally by Varoufakis as he entered talks with Brussels back in February.

Ireland was one of the three bust eurozone countries, with Portugal, to agree an EU/IMF rescue deal and remains buried under a mountain of debt. But unlike Greece, the centre-right coalition led by Kenny has secured a sustained period of growth, mostly through higher exports.

Like Spain and Portugal, Ireland’s ruling coalition fears a Syriza-style challenge from the left.

In the Republic that means Sinn Féin. In Spain, which continues to suffer high unemployment and huge private indebtedness, Podemos is a challenger in November elections.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem

The Dutch finance minister, who made the mistake of travelling to Athens shortly after Tsipras took power only to be lambasted by Varoufakis, has a deep antipathy to the Syriza plan to reschedule, or if possible write down, its debts.

That first meeting with Varoufakis framed Dijsselbloem’s hostility, which has never faded, although he is now more circumspect about articulating it. A mild-mannered Labour MP, he was transformed into a hardliner seeking detailed commitments from Athens for reform.

Wolfgang Schäuble

The German finance minister and prominent Christian Democrat has worn his political colours on his sleeve, objecting to virtually all concessions to the new Greek government.

Recently he accused the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, of mendacity and reiterated that Greece’s debt problems lay squarely with the fact that the Mediterranean nation had lived far beyond its means.

At the time he said: “The new Greek government has totally destroyed the trust of its European partners … this is a serious setback.”

An architect of German reunification, the veteran eurocrat has begun to appear more relaxed as Varoufakis has upset one euro finance minister after another, consolidating the German position that Greece must stick to the austerity plan.

Jean-Claude Juncker

A peripheral figure during debt talks with Greece only a few months ago, the calm and diplomatic Juncker has moved centre stage.

To use a football analogy, he was given the task during the G7 conference in Dresden of man-marking Tsipras. And as any defender will tell you, man-marking is a frustrating occupation. On Sunday Juncker was visibly angry.

He was told to expect a redrafted compromise memo from Athens. He said: “Alexis Tsipras promised that by Thursday evening he would present a second proposal. Then he said he would present it on Friday.

“And then he said he would call on Saturday. But I have never received that proposal, so I hope I will receive it soon. I would like to have that Greek proposal.”

The former prime minister of Luxembourg is sure to be all smiles when Tsipras returns to the negotiating table, though he is unlikely to be handed a revised draft until near the end of the month.

Christine Lagarde

The boss of the IMF has appeared to flip-flop lately after a return to espousing neoliberal policies of labour market reform and privatisations as a means to rebuilding the Greek government’s finances.

Only a few months ago she adopted a more conciliatory tone, scaling down the demands made on Athens and talking up an extension of the current bailout.

As one of three major lenders, the organisation has admitted it made a major mistake when Greece defaulted for a second time in 2012, when it replaced Athens’ private-sector borrowing with its own loans, pushing up the overall debt burden.

Mario Draghi

The attitude of the president of the European Central Bank was partly formed by the way his officials were treated in Athens.

At a late-night session in Brussels a couple of months ago, he read Tsipras the riot act, demanding respect and cooperation after his team in Athens was confined to its hotel, refused access to Greek ministries, and required bodyguards when faced with aggressive protesters.

More recently, in his capacity as head of one third of the troika of lenders, he has supplied Greek banks with much-needed loans to prevent them falling over while talks continue.

Vladimir Putin

It is only a couple of weeks since the Russian president took yet another opportunity to foment unrest inside the eurozone by promising a better life for Greece outside the eurozone.

He welcomed Tsipras to Moscow a few weeks ago and hinted at aid for Greece should it leave the currency union.

He has a war chest from years of oil tax receipts and would be happy to offer guarantees and loans for a deal that would upset Berlin and Washington, despite a domestic recession and the clamour from struggling state enterprises for extra cash.

Greece is also a key Nato member and has a large army, which Putin would enjoy drawing closer to his sphere of influence.

There are also ties via Cyprus, where Russian oligarchs stashed large sums of cash and then found themselves vulnerable when the island declared itself bust.