Greece must pass new laws by Wednesday for bailout – Stubb

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 honor any new debts.

Austrian Finance Minister Hans Jörg Schelling said that finance ministers might present eurozone leaders with alternative proposals on whether to give Greece a new round of rescue loans. They include changes to labor laws that would make it easier to fire workers as well as the further liberalization of markets for products such as pharmaceuticals, milk and baked goods, the statement said.

Managing Director of the global Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde, center, arrives for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the EU Lex building in Brussels on Saturday, July 11, 2015.

However Stubb denied claims which circulated late on Saturday evening that Finland is the only Eurogroup country not to accept Greece’s proposed austerity measures as a means of restoring financial stability to the beleaguered economy.

“We look forward to seeing if the Greek government is ready to fulfill its obligations”, he said.

The banks have been shuttered for the best part of two weeks and daily withdrawals from ATMs have been limited to a paltry 60 euro (£43).

The draft said Greece needed €7 billion by July 20, when it must make a crucial bond redemption to the European Central Bank, and a total of €12 billion by mid-August when another ECB payment falls due.

“If this was a negotiation from 1 to 10, I think we are still standing somewhere between 3 and 4, so making progress but we are not there yet”, Finnish finance minister Alex Stubb said as he entered the meeting in Brussels. The banks, according to some accounts, have barely enough cash in their vaults to last through the week.

EU Commissioner for the euro Valdis Dombrovskis said that it was “relatively unlikely” the commission would get the green light yesterday to launch formal negotiations for a new bailout.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, whose country is Greece’s biggest creditor, maintained a hard line.

“The most important currency has been lost: that is trust and reliability”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday.

The leaders are firmly focused on “plan A” that involves Greece living up to its obligations and staying in the euro, a European official who is close to the negotiations said.

The ECB is providing emergency liquidity to keep Greek banks afloat but has frozen the limit, with fears that failure to reach a deal could cause it to shut off the taps completely.

In June, Mr Tsipras during a visit to Russia sealed a preliminary agreement for Russia to build a 2-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) gas pipeline through Greece, extending the TurkStream project, which is intended to supply Russian gas to Turkey.

Highlighting the reluctance to grant another rescue, Germany’s finance ministry floated proposals demanding stronger Greek measures or a five-year “time-out” from the euro zone.

Riled by six months of personal attacks and contradictory messages from Athens, euro-area policy makers are forcing Tsipras to overcome the credibility gap they said was a key hurdle to more loans.

Tsipras went into the talks looking for a commitment from creditors to restructure its debt.

However, in an early morning message, president of the European Union Donald Tusk announced it had been cancelled and a separate meeting would start on Sunday afternoon and “last until we conclude talks on Greece”.

Without a debt deal in the coming hours, Greece faces financial collapse and Grexit.