Athens: Greece may have staved off a plunge into new financial crisis and a forced exit from the Eurozone – for now – as a package of new taxes and reforms received a grudging welcome in Brussels.
Monday was billed as crunch-day for the Greek economy, as the government's cupboards are bare and multi-billion-dollar loans come due, the first at the end of the month.
Greece took a new package of proposals, written up on the weekend, to Brussels, to a lunchtime meeting of Europe's finance ministers followed by an evening meeting of country leaders.
The new proposals were only received by some European finance ministers hours before they were due in Brussels, causing many to grumble ahead of the meeting.
In the end, they refused to give their final stamp of approval, saying they needed to see the details.
However, the response was overall interpreted as a sign the parties are close enough to seal an agreement – and free up rescue funds to pay Greece's debts – before the end of the week.
After the short, one-hour meeting Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Eurogroup president, said it had been a "positive step in the process".
Work on the detail of the agreement could "start immediately as far as we are concerned", and if all went well a final agreement could be reached later in the week, he said.
In an interview with the BBC, Greece's Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis said his country's new proposals had broken the deadlock: money-making measures including a new tax on large businesses, higher taxes on the wealthy (the so-called 'solidarity tax'), and some increases in consumption tax (VAT) on selected items.
Greece's Syriza government, led by Alexis Tsipras, had not crossed any of its "red lines", avoiding further reductions in pensions or public sector wages.
It had failed to win the debt relief it had promised its supporters, but had been given a commitment that debt relief would be "on the agenda for negotiation" in coming months, he said.
Greece's delegation received a somewhat frosty welcome in Brussels, with Austria's finance minister complaining that Greece should pay for his repeated travel to the European capital, and the Finnish minister of finance saying they had "wasted a lot of air miles".
Ireland's Finance Minister Michael Noonan said there hadn't been adequate preparation for the meeting and "this says a lot about the situation in Athens".
At the time of writing, the leaders' meeting had not yet concluded.
Ahead of that meeting Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said the "let's wait and see" strategy had to end.
"I want to end the political gambling," he said. "The latest Greek proposals are the first real proposals in many weeks, although they obviously still need the assessment of the institutions and further work.
"But the most important thing is that the leaders take full responsibility for the political process to avoid the worst-case scenario, which means uncontrollable, chaotic Graccident."
However, the deal may also face trouble at home. In Athens, for the second day in a row, protesters gathered in the city centre – though this time they were mostly pro-Europe marchers.
Monday night's protest was dominated by demonstrators waving EU flags and blowing whistles to signify their wish to remain in the union and keep euros in their wallet.
The turnout was at least as big as the anti-austerity gathering the previous night, showing the deep divide in Greek society.
Some anti-austerity protesters showed up to challenge the gathering, and riot police were sent to Syntagma Square, but the largely good-natured crowd showed no sign of violence.
Veteran columnist Petros Papakonstantinou, of the Kathimerini newspaper, predicted "turbulence" rather than political schism as a result of Syriza's deal.
Tsipras faces several hurdles to getting the deal approved on the home front, and his biggest challenge is the fiercely anti-austerity left wing of his own party.
The deal will have to pass the 11-person Syriza central secretariat, the party's central committee and its parliamentary coalition.
"Some blood will be shed," Papakonstantinou said. "Perhaps two ministers could resign, or even vote against (the deal), and some MPs, seven or eight, I don't know, but not enough to cause new elections. People will say it's a bad deal, but they will not cause a split of the party, that's my personal understanding.
"But keep in mind they keep changing, day to day ... There is huge pressure on the left wing to veto the deal, but I think the leadership of the left wing are more cold-blooded.
"(Syriza) will have to live with a very bad deal … but they will survive in the short run."
While Syriza has not put much of its election manifesto into action, "at least they didn't make things worse," Papakonstantinou said. "For the first six months in five years we didn't have any new austerity measure, no firings from the civil service, no closing schools or hospitals – it used to be every week, every month."
"Tsipras is rather safe at the moment – the only danger is if the final deal is too humiliating."
