A stony silence round the European summit table after Greece's new prime minister lectured his EU peers on the woes of austerity may form the soundtrack to days of diplomacy aimed at averting financial chaos. Alexis Tsipras, the 40-year-old radical leftist whom Greeks elected last month to get them out of a German-backed loan deal whose terms they find oppressive, encountered anything but a meeting of minds at his first EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. And that gulf in understanding, further emphasised by new talk from Athens of debt writeoffs and a cartoon in a newspaper close to Tsipras that depicted the German finance minister as a Nazi boiling down Greeks for their fat, may take more bridging than a single meeting of finance ministers planned for Monday.
People who were in the room when Tsipras presented his case for easier credit terms to his 27 fellow leaders in Brussels on Thursday described a politeness on all sides -- a far cry from the fireworks some had feared from the young upstart in their midst - but also a coolness, with no follow-up discussion. Some were even a shade disappointed by a performance more muted and less charged with charisma than they had anticipated. "He wasn't provocative or arrogant," said one EU diplomat, who concurred with other sources who said Tsipras had spoken in the general, and by now familiar, terms of his election campaign. "But it was a bit out place in terms of the usual business-like tone in Council, where you talk in direct, concrete terms. It was rather broad-brush. He's straight from campaigning -- and from a party that has never even been in any government before."
Some leaders did not appear to give Tsipras their undivided attention, though he had appeased them by backing a common line against Russia. That allayed fears of a Greek veto on sanctions against Moscow at a summit dominated by briefings from the German and French leaders who had arrived hotfoot from brokering a truce in Ukraine. Summit chairman Donald Tusk, a former Polish premier whose blunt management style already contrasts with that of a Belgian predecessor famed for his patience with endless debate, had made clear from the outset there would be no discussion with Tsipras - leaving negotiations to finance ministers in the coming days.
Yet as technical experts began a first tentative exploration of areas of agreement and dispute on Friday, two days after euro zone ministers failed to agree even a common outline of the issues, any kind of deal on Monday seemed far from certain. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch minister who will chair that meeting of the Eurogroup, said he was "very pessimistic" -- though all parties hope some credit package will be in place in two weeks' time when the existing EU bailout expires and Greek banks risk finding themselves cut off from access to funding. "People want a lot," Dijsselbloem said. "Expectations of the (Greek) government are sky high. But the possibilities, given the state of their economy, are very limited. So that still requires an enormous adjustment and I don't know if we can figure that out as soon as Monday. "The first steps have to come from the Greek government."
