France praised a package of measures proposed by Greece in return for a 53.5 billion-euro ($59.4 billion) bailout as the German government withheld judgment, saying it will wait for creditors to make a first assessment, reports Bloomberg.
The responses allow the package of spending cuts, pension savings and tax increases to go to the next stage after it was submitted to creditor institutions late on Thursday. Euro-area officials will examine the proposals in Brussels on Friday, while the Greek parliament takes it up later the same day.
French President François Hollande said the reform proposals were “serious, credible” and demonstrated Greece’s determination to stay in the euro area. Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who will chair an emergency session of his euro-area counterparts in Brussels on Saturday, said creditors will give their judgment “probably later today.”
“If there’s broad support in Greece it gives more credibility,” he told reporters in The Hague. “But also then we have to see whether the proposals are good, if it gets Greece really out of the crisis.”
Finnish finance minister Alexander Stubb confirmed on Twitter that the Eurogroup would sit to consider the measure once creditors have had time to assess.
The euro and stocks surged on the prospect of a deal, ending a near-six-month standoff with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza-led government since it was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform.
The package almost mirrored that from creditors on June 26th, which was rejected by Greek voters in a July 5 referendum. The program request would last a number of years, so it would have to go beyond what was discussed two weeks ago with tougher conditions, a German government official said by phone, asking not be named because the negotiations are private.