Greek crisis casts pall over EU summit

An already complicated meeting now must take place against the backdrop of 11th-hour, stop-start negotiations on Greece.

A summit agenda already full of sticky issues got even more complicated Thursday as EU leaders arrived in Brussels to find Greece, its international creditors, and eurozone finance ministers still locked in tense, stop-start negotiations aimed at avoiding a Greek default.

This week’s Greek talks began in a special summit of eurozone heads of state and government on Monday night, were restarted in a meeting of finance ministers on Wednesday and then picked up again Thursday, breaking off just before the summit with no deal.

The failure to conclude the talks to everyone’s satisfaction meant the Greek issue would loom over the summit discussions later Thursday on Europe’s migration crisis and on U.K. proposals for EU reform.

Leaders had hoped the Greek matter would not force its way onto their official agenda. But it did. After the failure of the Greek talks, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem joined the summit meeting to debrief leaders on the situation. That discussion pushed back start of the migration talks to Thursday night’s dinner.

Council President Donald Tusk, who is presiding over the two-day meeting of EU leaders, admitted that the Greek issue was taking its toll.

“Work is under way and for sure it will need still many hours,” Tusk had told reporters before the start of the summit — and before the Eurogroup decided to hold yet another meeting on Saturday. “The last hours have been critical but I have a good hunch that unlike in Sophocles’ tragedies this Greek story will have a happy end.”

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has been shuttling back and forth to Brussels over several days for talks with his creditors, tried to put the best face on the situation as he arrived for the summit.

“I think European history is full of disagreements, negotiations and then compromises,” Tsipras said. “So after the comprehensive Greek proposals, I’m confident that we will reach a compromise that will help the eurozone and Greece to overcome the crisis.”

But other leaders arriving in Brussels sounded less optimistic — and even irked that the issue was still hanging over a summit dedicated to other issues.

“According to what I heard today, we don’t yet have the necessary progress,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, “and in some places we have the feeling that we’re slipping backwards, so it’s very important that Greece works with three institutions and the finance ministers decide.”

Thursday’s summit agenda remains dominated by the migration issue, with Tusk trying to broker a compromise between the European Commission, which has been pushing all member states to take part in a mandatory program for the relocation of 40,000 asylum-seekers across the EU, and member states opposed to quotas.

Despite a sustained push from Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker over the last two months on the mandatory quotas, there has never been enough support among member states to make it happen.

Draft summit conclusions circulated to EU member countries shortly before the start of the meeting included language that avoided using the word mandatory but nevertheless declaring that “all Member States will participate.”

It also said the EU would set up a “temporary and exceptional mechanism” to this effect, but that member states would agree by the end of July on how asylum-seekers would be distributed among them.

In other words, participation would be mandatory, but the level of participation would be voluntary. It remained to be seen whether even that language would be acceptable to all the countries around the table.

“Today we have no consensus among member states on mandatory quotas for migrants,” Tusk told reporters before the start of the summit. “But at the same time the voluntary scheme cannot be an excuse to do nothing. I can understand those who want this voluntary mechanism, but they will only be credible if they give precise and significant pledges by the end of July at the latest, because solidarity without sacrifice is pure hypocrisy.”

The draft conclusions also contain a concession of sorts to Hungary, the EU country which has put up the fiercest opposition to the mandatory quotas regime and which claims that it is being inundated by asylum-seekers. The proposed statement promises “a high-level conference” to address the flow of migration through the Western Balkans leading to Hungary.

Arriving at the summit, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has been among the biggest proponents of bold action to address the migration crisis, said he hoped the compromise would be acceptable.

“I will see at the end of the summit whether I’m satisfied or not,” Renzi said. “What is important is that finally immigration is no longer just an issue for Italy or the Mediterranean but it’s a theme that concerns all of Europe. Now we will have to see how the deal among member states will end up and at the end [of the Council] we can see whether will be satisfied with it.”

Also on the agenda for Thursday is a dinner discussion of proposals for EU reform from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, who has promised a referendum on Britain’s EU membership by 2017.

British diplomats were already downplaying expectations for that discussion, saying they would amount to a general kicking off of a negotiation process that would continue until the end of 2015. In recent weeks Cameron has already met with nearly all of the other leaders around the table to discuss the issue, and the talk Thursday was expected to be a short recap of those meetings and an agreement on a timeframe for taking the issue forward.

According to the draft conclusions of the summit, that timetable would see the full European Council revisiting the issue in December.

“Today we will only start this process,” Tusk said. “However one thing should be clear from the very beginning: the fundamental values of the European Union are not for sale and so are non-negotiable.”

But as the leaders entered the meeting on Thursday afternoon, it was unclear whether there would much appetite left at dinner for that discussion.

Zeke Turner, Maïa de la Baume and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this article.

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