Greece’s premier accused European leaders of attempting to “blackmail” Greek voters, just hours after apparently holding out an olive branch to the country’s creditors by accepting most of the terms of the economic reform plan they had tabled last weekend.
Eurozone officials said they were baffled by the mixed messages from Athens, which this week missed a €1.5bn payment to the International Monetary Fund and was forced to impose capital controls to avert a financial meltdown.
In a televised address, Alexis Tsipras urged his countrymen to vote No in a referendum on whether they should accept tough terms for bailout aid, and accused EU leaders of threatening to drive Greece out of the euro. He called EU leaders “extremist conservative forces” who had forced the shutdown of Greece’s banks “because the government decided to give people a say”.