ATHENS: Lawmakers in Greece will vote as early as Friday whether to back a last-ditch reform plan the government submitted to creditors overnight in a bid to stave off financial collapse and exit from the eurozone.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's administration handed the package to eurozone partners just two hours before a midnight deadline.
The offer, set out in a 13-page document, concedes to Greece's paymasters on several key points that Tsipras's ruling coalition -- and the Greek voters, in a referendum last weekend -- had previously fiercely opposed.
"We face critical decisions," Tsipras told Syriza lawmakers, according to the state news agency ANA.
In a bid to head off a possible challenge to the measures within his party, he urged them "to stand united and firm in front of these important decisions."
It remains to be seen how sceptical eurozone partners, Germany particularly, respond to the submission. Several had been openly suggesting Greece could be cut loose from the eurozone.
A make-or-break summit bringing together leaders of all 28 EU nations, not just the 19 that use the euro, will be held on Sunday.
It will decide whether to accept Greece's reform plan in exchange for another huge bailout -- its third in five years -- amounting to tens of billions of euros, or force a "Grexit" from the eurozone.
European stock markets rallied on news of the Greek proposal. London's FTSE index rose 1.07 percent at the start of trading, Frankfurt's DAX 30 added 1.6 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris leapt 2.67 percent. The euro surged to $1.111.
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