Greece Submits Plan to Tackle Debt Crisis

BRUSSELS — The Greek government submitted proposals to its creditors early Monday aimed at breaking the deadlock over a debt crisis that has imperiled Athens’s continuing membership in the euro currency zone.

The proposals came just hours before European Union leaders were to hold emergency meetings aimed at forcing a breakthrough in the country’s international bailout negotiations. An agreement has eluded Greece’s creditors and the eurozone’s ministers of finance despite months of talks.

Buying Greece critical time on Monday, the European Central Bank for a third time in less than a week increased its emergency funding to Greek lenders to stanch heavy deposit withdrawals, according to a Greek banking official with knowledge of the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Financial markets were upbeat on Monday in hopes of a deal. European stocks rose 3 percent in early trading, with shares in Greece spiking more than 7 percent. The interest rates on Greek government bonds fell sharply.

“I think this is time for a substantial and viable solution that would allow Greece to come back to growth within the eurozone,” Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, told reporters at an impromptu joint news conference with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, late Monday morning.

“We have made progress over the last few days, but we are not yet there,” Mr. Juncker said, adding that he did not know if the meetings would yield an agreement on Monday. Mr. Juncker displayed his trademark jocularity by giving Mr. Tsipras a friendly slap to the face before heading off for a series of private talks.

The latest proposals by Athens were a “good basis for progress,” Martin Selmayr, a senior aide to Mr. Juncker wrote on his Twitter account early Monday. The proposals, details of which have not been publicly disclosed, arrived shortly after midnight on Sunday, according to another aide to Mr. Juncker.

Greece also addressed its proposals to the European Central Bank and to the International Monetary Fund, which, together with the European Commission, help oversee Greece’s compliance with the terms of its two bailouts, which total 240 billion euros, or about $272 billion at current exchange rates.

It was not clear if the proposals would meet demands by creditors for an overhaul of pensions and increases in taxes. How much progress could be made on Monday was also unclear.

Mr. Tsipras’s morning talks with Mr. Juncker and other top European Union policy makers were set to take place shortly before a gathering of the so-called Eurogroup of finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the single currency.

In the evening, eurozone leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which is the biggest lender to Greece, will meet in Brussels.

The crisis apparently came to a head after Athens resisted economic overhauls demanded by creditors. Those overhauls were required in exchange for a payment of €7.2 billion from a bailout program that is due to expire on June 30. That same day, Greece faces a debt repayment to the International Monetary Fund of €1.6 billion, which most observers say the country cannot afford without new aid.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council who organized the emergency meeting of the leaders of the 19 European Union countries that use the euro, warned Athens late last week that it faced a critical choice on terms that had already been clearly outlined.

 And in what appeared to be a reference to how difficult it might still be to reach a deal, Mr. Selmayr described the proposals as “eine zangengeburt,” which is German for “a forceps delivery.”