Fra Guardian
Greek finance minister says he does not believe Europe would let his country leave the eurozone, but decision on its fate is expected by Thursday
Fears that Greece could leave the eurozone continued to mount on Saturday, despite its finance minister saying that Europe would not allow that to happen.
Yanis Varoufakis told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t believe that any sensible European bureaucrat or politician will go down that road.”
Asked whether the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were bluffing, he said: “I hope they are.”
Varoufakis said Greece had not agreed to the proposals offered by its creditors because they were “yet another version of the failed proposals of the past”.
Greek officials and the country’s creditors were due to resume talks in Brussels on Saturday. Athens needs to reach a deal before the end of June to avoid running out of money and defaulting on payments due to the IMF.
It is expected to make counter-proposals at Saturday’s talks in Brussels in a bid to end a five-month standoff since Alexis Tsipras’s anti-austerity government was elected in January.
Eurozone finance ministers will meet on Thursday in Luxembourg and that meeting is now viewed as the deadline for a decision on Greece’s fate.
Officials preparing for the Luxembourg talks included the default scenario in their discussions for the first time at a meeting on Thursday night in Bratislava.
Until then they had refused to countenance the prospect of a default and the issue has not been discussed at any official level.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is said to have resigned herself to the prospect, and an opinion poll for ZDF television found that 51% of Germans want Greece to leave the eurozone, up from 33% at the start of the year
