It will resume Saturday. The finance ministers plan to meet again on Saturday in Brussels, hoping that technical discussions will find accord on the outstanding issues and produce a paper they can sign.
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“The institutions [creditors] informed us that on a number of issues there is still a wide gap with the Greek authorities. So it is going to be hard”.
Greece will now vote on the last offer made by worldwide lenders in a referendum scheduled for next Sunday.
Earlier on Thursday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed confidence that a compromise will be reached and Greece and the eurozone will be able to overcome the crisis. “We are coming up with a joint proposal, it has been focused and disciplined work and unfortunately the other side is not there yet, so still a lot of work to do”. “But it has to be balanced”.
Euro zone leaders were relieved in late April when Tsipras shook up his negotiating team, sidelining Varoufakis, who had infuriated his euro zone peers with what they regarded as ideological lectures.
What happens on June 30?
Greek officials have said the government won’t make a 1.6 billion euro debt repayment to the IMF due on Tuesday.
He says creditors are “on the same page” about the need for Athens to introduce deeper reforms.
“We commit to take all necessary measures to further improve the resilience of our economies. It’s always give and take”.
Prof. Scicluna said it will be up to the eurogroup meeting to determine whether Greece would technically be in default or whether it would be handed a one-week extension.
“This is not a referendum on European leaders. I think Greece has none left”.
Does it matter? It certainly keeps up the pressure on Greece and it would count formally as a “default event” under the eurozone’s lending agreements with Greece.
“The whole of [Greek] society is disrupted, and has been for a while”, said Dijsselbloem.
“And I am not aware of any real indications of anything else”, she told a news conference. “There would be a negative message that euro membership is reversible”, said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who a week ago declared that he didn’t fear contagion from Greece.
Germany’s finance minister has expressed pessimism that a deal can be struck between Greece and its creditors over the country’s debt crisis. Differences remain, however.
Mr Tsipras had been up for much of the night locked in talks with Christine Lagarde of the worldwide Monetary Fund, Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank and Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission.
Mr Varoufakis, claimed that the Greek government had “bent over backwards to accommodate some rather unusual demands by the institutions” and that it was “now up to them to come to the party”. Government bond yields in Greece, Spain and Portugal rose, an indication of investor concern. Tsipras rejected the creditors’ suggestions. Turning off the credit could deepen financial turmoil. Somehow, along the way, both outlooks of the world have got mixed up, to the point that the EU is today nothing more than a flag bearer of those neoliberal policies.
“The Greek government has, if I understand correctly, ended the negotiations unilaterally”, Schäuble said.
Greece also wants any deal to include ways to relieve the burden of its enormous debt – even lower interest rates and longer repayment schedules. The government could fund itself for a few more weeks or months, relying on reserves mobilized from local municipalities and other state entities.
Meanwhile, eurozone finance ministers begin arriving for their meeting.
A Greek banking official says the European Central Bank has approved a request from Athens to increase the amount of emergency liquidity Greek lenders can tap from the country’s central bank.
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The impending default on the IMF loans leaves Greece sliding towards an exit from the euro, with unforeseeable consequences for Europe’s common currency project. The Germans just want their money back.
