A new deal: Greece signs up to a painful, humiliating agreement with Europe

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A new deal

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Agreeing to long-resisted reforms is just the start for Greece

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AT ONE point during marathon euro-zone talks in Brussels on the evening of July 12th, Alexis Tsipras was a few minutes late returning from a break. A rumour took flight: the Greek prime minister, facing brutal demands from his 18 fellow euro-zone leaders in exchange for an agreement to begin talks on a new bail-out, had fled the building. It turned out that he was in the bathroom.
That it seemed plausible for Mr Tsipras to have pulled a personal Grexit sheds light on the extraordinary pressure the prime minister faced during the all-night talks. At 6am, locked in discussions over a controversial privatisation fund with Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, and François Hollande, the French president, Mr Tsipras did indeed come close to walking out. But spurred by pressure from Donald Tusk, the chair of the summit, the three eventually managed to forge a deal that could form the basis of a …<div class="og_rss_groups"></div>
Source: The Economy