“That’s what I would do”, Stathakis told private Mega television. Some eurozone countries say they’ll only back a third bailout if the International Monetary Fund takes part.
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Saturday’s vote triggered speculation of the creation of a possible national unity government and an early general election.
The ECB has allowed Greece’s almost bankrupt banks access to an 89 billion-euro lifeline and must approve an extension on Monday.
Theodoros Mihopoulos, who heads Mr Tsipras’ office, said the report in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper “is completely denied”.
The Eurogroup talks ran into difficulty after signals that eurosceptic populists in Finland’s ruling coalition will bring down the two-month-old government if Helsinki backs a third aid package for Greece.
Assuaging those concerns is the task facing Euclid Tsakalotos, who has been Greek finance minister for barely a week, following the resignation of his outspoken predecessor Yanis Varoufakis.
“It is important to find out the concrete steps and also how those proposals are going to translate into legislative initiatives”, Gramegna said.
The Greek government hoped the vote would give it an emphatic mandate to continue the talks with the creditors – but it also revealed the depth of opposition to fresh austerity.
European Union economic affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said that “rapidly” putting reforms in action was “key to getting a program, to be able to tackle the debt“.
Earlier on Saturday, the Greek parliament backed a proposed bailout package with painful austerity measures from Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government, with 251 of 300 MPs voting in favour of the package.
French finance minister Michel Sapin said Europe wants to hear the nitty-gritty around Greece’s proposals. At what moment are you doing to do it?
The Associated Press quotes an unnamed European official as saying that global creditors want proof from the Greek government that it will stick to its reform promises despite having reneged on some of the same terms for previous bailouts.
The country’s eurosceptic True Finns party is poised to bring down the two-month old government if it gives its assent to a new Greek rescue.
Talks between eurozone ministers resumed on Sunday.
Making more concessions, though, will be tough on the Greek government since the shadow of severe dissent from governing lawmakers was already hanging over them. “Now we need to build trust”.
Germany’s finance ministry has drawn up a paper envisaging Greece leaving the eurozone for five years if it fails to improve its bailout proposals.
A senior European Union official said the Eurogroup talks would include discussions on whether Greece needs some debt relief. The prompt volte-face confounded negotiators.
A “Grexit” would make Greece the first country to leave the eurozone and its departure would have unpredictable ramifications on both Greece and the global financial markets.
Greece’s proposal “is not good enough yet”, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters Saturday as he arrived for emergency consultations with his euro-area colleagues in Brussels.
The officials were not authorized to be publicly named.
Several German officials have said that Athens has no more credibility after years of accepting bailouts without implementing reforms, and have openly called for its expulsion from the Eurozone.
“It is still very hard but work is still in progress”, he said.
The Greek economy has shrunk by a quarter over the past few years while unemployment and poverty rates have swelled alarmingly.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble during a parliamentary debate on the Greek debt crisis.
“We don’t have the luxury of time”, said Thanos Dokos, director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, a think tank in Athens. “There must be reform, solid reform and they have to be put in place quickly, he said”.
“For five years, we have experienced such [reform] lists being transmitted, but the implementation of the measures never occurred”, said Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling, noting that past Greek governments had failed to live up to their promises.
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They sought evidence that Greece was committed to enacting the roughly 13 billion euros in spending cuts and tax increases that it proposed in a bailout request Thursday, and some wanted Athens to pass legislation by Wednesday that set in stone the cuts and revisions, according to a member of the Greek delegation in Brussels who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
