Economy & Finance

Special Report: The man who cost Greece billions

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ATHENS Once again Alexis Tsipras was struggling to make a decision. For hours on July 13, the Greek prime minister and Europe’s leaders had been trying to thrash out a new deal to bail out bankrupt Greece and keep the country in the euro zone.

Now a clean copy of the latest text had been printed, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and European Council President Donald Tusk were satisfied with the terms. So too appeared Tsipras &ndash- but he left the room to check the details one more time with colleagues in his leftist party Syriza.

Nearly an hour later he had still not returned. Heads of government and state paced around, fiddling with their phones. The Lithuanian president and Slovenian prime minister said they could wait no longer and left through a backdoor, a diplomat involved in the summit said.

When Tsipras finally reappeared, his response confirmed what Europe’s leaders had suspected for some time: without the full backing of his party, the Greek leader could not commit. The drafting process had to begin anew.

The setback reinforced European doubts that Tsipras could control his party. Friends and associates say the 40-year-old’s calm demeanor belies a man struggling to balance Syriza, Greece’s economic interests and his own leftist ideology. At many points he has turned to a small team of advisers, conferring with them again and again before making major decisions.

Tsipras’s strategy going into the bailout talks was to push international partners to the edge, betting they would make concessions to prevent Greece crashing out of the euro zone. In the event, though, he was forced to blink first and then ad-lib his way through the crisis that ensued.

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