Eurozone finance ministers arrive in Brussels for crunch Greek talks

A full summit of all 28 European Union leaders will vote on Greece’s proposal on Sunday. In particular, the reforms proposed list includes measures worth about 12 billion euros focusing on the taxation and pension systems, according to “Naftemporiki” (Shipping Industry News).

Arriving for talks with his peers in the 19-country eurozone, Noonan said Greece also needs to do more to rebuild trust with its European partners. Germany and many other European countries rule out an outright debt cut, arguing it would be illegal under European treaties. “We won’t be able to rely on promises”.

Greece is asking creditors for €53.5bn ($59.47bn; £38.4bn) to cover its debts until 2018.

Ex- finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who resigned this week, was absent for family reasons, saying on Twitter he was spending the weekend with his daughter who was visiting from Australia.

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan sought to downplay expectations that a decisive deal over Greece’s bailout request will emerge at Saturday’s meeting of the eurozone’s 19 finance ministers.

“I am still hopeful”, Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic affairs, told reporters as he left the Eurogroup meeting.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde struck a conciliatory tone upon arrival at the Eurogroup meeting. “It is not about closing a deal”.

European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, who is in charge of the euro in the EU executive, doused Greek hopes of an immediate agreement on Sunday to start loan negotiations.

Finance ministers broke up talks Saturday after more than eight hours with Greece’s creditors unconvinced that the Tsipras government could be trusted to reform the Greek economy.

“We haven’t concluded our discussions”.

They’re very similar to ideas put forward by the country’s creditors in late June before Tsipras walked out of talks, triggering the collapse of the last bailout and forcing the closure of Greece’s banks. The goal, Sakellaridis said, was to do the necessary preparatory work for the proposal so it would reach the Eurogroup with a guaranteed positive outcome.

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.

A new Greek proposal for economic policy overhauls and budget cuts appears to have moved closer to creditors’ demands on some of the most divisive issues, but it was too early to tell whether it would be sufficient to unlock a new bailout package.

With banks shuttered for the last two weeks, cash withdrawals rationed and the economy on the edge of an abyss, some Greeks in the streets of Athens vented their anger on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Tsipras surprised many in his own country and party Thursday when he presented a plan containing numerous elements – including austerity measures – that the voters had just rejected by a wide margin.

As for Tsipras’s calls for the country’s creditors to consider reducing or rescheduling its massive debt mountain of 320 billion euros, Schaeuble said this was out of the question. France’s Socialist government has been among Greece’s few allies in the eurozone during the past months of tough negotiations, with Germany taking a far harder line.

The German Finance Ministry declined to comment on the report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Several sources said there was consensus among the other 18 ministers around the table during the “exceptionally difficult” talks that the leftist government in Athens must take further steps to convince them it would honour any new debts.