Greece wants 'clean' bailout exit

Greece will exit its bailout programme without requesting a precautionary credit line, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Monday, adding that Athens would not return to the "spendthrift days" of the past, before the debt crisis erupted.
Greece's current bailout, the third since 2010, expires on August 20. Athens hopes that it will have regained full market access by then and be free to set its own economic policy after eight years of tight supervision by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund.
But some EU officials are worried that as time passes, Greek politicians will be under increasing pressure to go on a spending spree again.
"There is neither a bailout extension nor a fake exit, a non-clean or a dirty exit - call it anything you want - in sight", Tsipras told his lawmakers.
"There is a clear completion (of the programme), a clean exit," he said.
"But this doesn't mean that we will... return to the days of plenty, the spendthrift days."
Eurozone creditors are now working on a debt relief offer for Greece that would be an incentive for Athens not to backtrack on reforms and to continue to stick to prudent fiscal policy, senior EU officials said last...

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