European Stability Mechanism

The European Commission (EC) is proposing to grant EUR 7 B bridge loan to Greece in order to cover the country's financing needs in July.

The funds will be provided through the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM), daily Kathimerini reports.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in the unenviable position of passing legislation he doesn’t even believe in to avert a Grexit and enter a new agreement with the troika (that is now called troika again).

The Economist magazine predicts that even though Greece might have avoided a Grexit in the short term, especially following Monday morning’s EU-19 deal to negotiate a new 3-year bailout plan through the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the country will inevitably abandon the common currency area before 2019.

The bailout plan pledged by the Eurozone leaders to Greece could reach EUR 86 B over three years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday.

There are four things that Greece needs to do now that an agreement with Greece’s creditors has been reached:

* Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will form a new national unity government when he gets back to Athens.

Eurozone leaders have unanimously reached an agreement on Monday to grant a European Stability Mechanism (ESM) programme to Greece on conditions that Athens will carry out serious reforms.

European Council President Donald Tusk announced the news after seventeen hours of negotiations, the Guardian reports.

Positive developments in Brussels as the Euroworking Group required just a brief amount of time to give its approval of Greek proposals it received on Friday. Eurogroup is meeting at 4 p.m. (Greek time) to make any amendments and give its seal to the agreement before it heads to EZ parliaments for ratification.

Bulgaria should keep its currency board system until adopting the euro, and join the EU's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) immediately after Bulgarian banks pass stress tests, a nominee for a new chief of the country's central bank said on Thursday.

During the European Commission Press Briefing, spokesperson Margaritis Schinas told reporters that the Commission had received an explicit order by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to examine the Greek economic needs and cooperate with the IMF regarding the sustainability of the country’s debt.

The European Stability Mechanism on Wednesday requested EU expert advice on Greece’s latest request for a loan to avoid default, amid a looming deadline by creditors to clinch a bailout deal by Sunday. ESM officials also requested IMF assistance.