Excerpt
SUMMARY: Greece struck a debt deal after a long night of negotiations with European creditors. According to the preliminary deal, the nearly bankrupt country will receive a $95 billion bailout over three years, and be subject to tough austerity measures. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from Greece and Judy Woodruff gets reaction from Eswar Prasad of Cornell University.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The nation of Greece and its creditors reached a preliminary deal to avert immediate financial collapse, but it demands that the struggling country make major concessions and means continued sacrifice and hardship for its people.
NewsHour special correspondent Malcolm Brabant has this report.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras emerged after a long night of bitter negotiations.
PRIME MINISTER ALEXIS TSIPRAS, Greece(through interpreter): Until the end, we battled to get an agreement to get the country back on its feet. We were faced with a very difficult decision within hard dilemmas. We took the responsibility to decide in order to avert the most extreme plans by conservative circles in the European Union.
MALCOLM BRABANT: German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of those conservatives who ran a hard bargain with the Greeks. They seemed ready to quit until European Council President Donald Tusk, who is also president of Poland, persuaded them to keep at it.
DONALD TUSK, President, European Council: The decision gives Greece the chance to get back on track with the support of European partners. It also avoids the social, economic and political consequences that a negative outcome would have brought.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Meanwhile, in Athens, pensioners saw no reason to celebrate, as they queued up to withdraw money outside closed banks.
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