Reuters
February 7, 2012
For two years, European officials have wrestled with Greece to try to save the country from financial ruin. Yet the closer talks get to a definitive deal, the greater the risk seems to get that negotiations might collapse once and for all.
Deadlines have come and gone, as have rescue packages, but now there is a firm one. Greece will be unable to meet massive bond payments on March 20 without more aid.
A first, 110-billion-euro plan was put together in May 2010, only to prove insufficient as Greece's situation worsened. A second, 130-billion-euro deal was agreed last October, but is yet to be finalized despite drawn-out, high-pressure negotiations that have left nerves and tempers frayed.
So many moving parts now need to come together at a single moment to clinch the deal that the danger of one piece being out of place and scuppering the whole enterprise has never been greater.
"They are dancing on a razor's edge," said Janis Emmanouilidis, a senior analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels who has written extensively on the debt crisis.
"Time is now really, really short. The further the crisis develops, the more intense these moments become. If something goes wrong, and that's becoming increasingly possible, at some point it could all not work out, with whatever consequences."
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