Greece’s new leftwing government has moved to head off insolvency and a run on the banks by submitting a menu of structural economic reforms to Brussels aimed at appeasing its eurozone creditors and securing a four-month bailout lifeline.



A six-page blueprint of new reforms is to be pored over in Brussels on Tuesday morning. The eurozone’s finance ministers are then expected to endorse the proposals, triggering an extension until the end of June of Greece’s bailout programme, which was due to expire next weekend.



The proposals, according to leaks in Athens on Monday evening, appeared vague, failing to give figures or detail on the expected fiscal impact of the measures. But the document followed intense communication between Brussels and Athens on Sunday and Monday aimed at squaring an agreement that would then be finessed over the weeks and months to come.



The proposals included an overhaul of Greece’s tax inspection regime aimed at improving tax collection and combatting widespread tax evasion among the wealthy. Athens also urged a crackdown on the illicit tobacco and fuel trade as well as other campaign pledges from Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister and Syriza leader who came to power a month ago promising to end five years of EU-dictated austerity.



Despite previous promises to reverse privatisation and reinstate sacked civil servants, the proposals were said to leave recent privatisations untouched and not to re-employ workers in the public sector. The government is also believed to be aiming to halt home repossessions caused by failure to repay loans.



A Greek government source said talks about the draft proposals with the country’s creditors – the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – had gone well.

“The good news is that no obstacle has emerged in discussions,” said the source.

According to the leaks, the government also pledged labour market reforms, according to a yardstick of best practices in the EU, and to follow the advice of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on introducing greater competition in the Greek economy.



Following weeks of brinkmanship over the terms of Greece’s bailout, Tsipras capitulated in several respects to the eurozone on Friday by agreeing to extend by four months the second bailout programme, which would otherwise have expired next Saturday, possibly leaving Greece insolvent and facing the prospect of quitting the single currency.



In an abrupt U-turn, Tsipras also yielded to the authority of the reviled troika of European and International Monetary Fund officials in policing the Greek government’s economic and fiscal policies, restricted his freedom of manoeuvre by renouncing any unilateral moves on the terms of Greece’s bailout, and committed to fully repaying the debt mountain he wanted partly written down.



In return, Tsipras gained two substantive changes: a likely reduction in the primary budget surplus – the excess of revenue over spending when debt-servicing costs are excluded – allowed to Greece by the eurozone this year; and the leeway to propose his own fiscal and economic policies rather than having them determined by the troika.



But the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank still have to approve the policies being proposed before the bailout extension can go ahead. The troika also has to conduct a review of more detailed Greek proposals, probably by the end of April, before the €7.2bn still available for Greece can be paid out.



With Greece mired in a short-term financing crisis and needing to redeem debt to the IMF in March, it remains unclear how Athens will make it through to the end of April without assistance.



Germany’s powerful finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, locked in a war of nerves with Tsipras and his flamboyant finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said Greece would not get a penny until the end of April at the earliest. He rubbed salt in the wounds of Tsipras’s concessions by adding that reality had caught up with the new Greek government, which would now have a hard time selling its defeat in Brussels on Friday to its anti-austerity and anti-German constituents at home.

Tsipras may have recovered the prerogative of making his own policy proposals, reasserting limited sovereignty, but his scope for action is severely constrained.



“The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the [EU, IMF] institutions,” said the statement agreed between the eurozone and Greece on Friday.



Leading Syriza politicians stressed over the weekend that their “red lines” would not be breached in the list of measures being proposed on Monday, meaning commitments to raising the minimum wage, restoring civil service jobs and back-pedalling on privatisation would remain.



The Tsipras wish-list needs to be checked by troika officials and then discussed by eurozone finance ministers by teleconference on Tuesday. The eurogroup has Tspiras on a tight leash, with the prime minister having to try to satisfy his creditors as well as his fiercely anti-austerity MPs.



The extension of the bailout until the end of June hinges on eurozone backing for the Tsipras proposals. If the expected deal breaks down, the single currency finance ministers are to immediately convene yet another emergency session in Brussels.



Insiders said the new administration was at pains to get the correct tone and style for the proposals. “We recognise that this is a very crucial moment,” said one. “It is our chance to assume control of our destiny by taking ownership of our reform programme.”

An all-out clampdown on economic crime – not least fuel smuggling, banking fraud and tax evasion – could yield authorities as much as €7bn, according to the newly appointed supreme court prosecutor, Panagiotis Nikoloudis, now tasked with battling corruption.

Nikoloudis has said he knows of 3,500 suspected cases of high-level tax avoidance, many involving offshore company accounts and the oligarch families at the top of Greece’s wealthy elite. The reforms will also focus on modernising the nation’s dysfunctional public sector.

