Progress in Greece bailout talks not satisfactory: EU
The president of the European Union (EU) Commission says he is not satisfied with the progress in talks over Greece’s bailout loans, but rejected the possibility that Athens might be forced to exit from the eurozone.
"I am not satisfied by the developments in the recent weeks. I don't think we have made sufficient progress, but we will try to push in the direction of a successful conclusion of the issues we have to deal with," Jean-Claude Juncker said ahead of talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the European Commission in Brussels on Friday.
"I am totally excluding a failure, I don't want a failure. I would like Europeans to go together. This is not the time for division, this is the time for coming together," he added.
Tsipras, whose Syriza party won the Greek general elections in early January, is on a visit to Brussels and Paris with the aim of finding cash to address a daunting repayment schedule in coming weeks.
His party won the election on the promise that it would renegotiate the terms of the country’s bailout program with the European Union.
On February 20, eurozone finance ministers agreed to give Greece a four-month extension of its international bailout to avert the possibility of the country’s exit from the currency area.
But Athens will not get any of the cash until eurozone partners approve a list of reform measures proposed by Greece.
The Tsipras government has tried to revise the terms of the country’s €240-billion (USD 270 billion) bailout it received from the troika of international lenders - the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union - following the 2009 economic crisis.
AR/NN/HMV
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