Greece must come back with proposals now – France’s Sapin

German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew off to Paris on Monday to consult with French President Francois Hollande a day after Greek voters rejected Merkel’s signature strategy for getting their heavily indebted country’s finances in order.

“France is doing everything, and will do everything, for Greece to stay in the euro zone because its place is in the euro zone”, said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

He said Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza government were “leading the Greek people on a path of bitter abandonment and hopelessness”.

If Italians were called to vote like the Greeks, 51 percent would support tough measures imposed by Europe to avoid crashing out of the euro, a recent Ipsos poll showed.

Greece and its creditors publicly blamed one another for an impasse in bailout talks, on the eve of a eurozone finance ministers’ meeting billed as key to their outcome.

Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Likhachev said Sunday’s result was “a step toward an exit from the eurozone”.

It will “determine the future trajectory of European integration”, he said.

Ingrid Arndt-Brauer, who chairs the finance committee in Germany’s lower house, said that she had expected her committee to be summoned on Tuesday to begin the process of helping Greece with a new bailout package in the wake of a “Yes”.

Pressed on what concessions Berlin might be willing to make to Tsipras, a finance ministry spokesman dismissed the idea of a debt restructuring sought by Athens and favored by the worldwide Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chief bailout negotiator Euclid Tsakalotos has been tipped to replace Varoufakis, official sources told Anadolu Agency.

“When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: ‘what a huge joke!’ Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts”.

European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said there was no easy way out of the crisis and the referendum result had widened the gap between Greece and other euro zone countries.

The European Central Bank’s Governing Council is also due to talk on Monday with a decision pending on what to do about Greek lenders that are dependent on its emergency credit.

“Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger”, they said in the letter, which will also appear in France’s Le Monde and in English in The Guardian and The Nation.

Merkel’s vice-chancellor, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, told a news conference: “If Greece wants to stay in the euro, the Greek government must quickly make a substantive offer that goes beyond its willingness thus far”.

“For the Greek population, life will get even more hard in the coming days and weeks”.

The rapprochement lessens the risk that the European Central Bank will pull the plug on Greek banks, which are bleeding cash and have been shut for seven business days.

After five years of economic crisis and mass unemployment, Greek electors voted 61.3 per cent “no” to the bailout conditions already rejected by their radical leftist government, casting Greece into the unknown.

Merkel, seemingly sanguine last week in remarking that Europe could “calmly” await the result of the referendum because the bloc was “strong”, has been at the forefront of efforts to resolve the crisis.