HELSINKI, June 29. /TASS/. Greece’s withdrawal from the euro area is not in the cards at the moment, the Finnish Finance Minister, Alexander Stubb told reporters on Monday.
He said Greece was not pulling out of the euro area at the moment and the Europeans continued doing everything in their power to keep the country there.
Stubb also indicated his unwillingness to mull over what would happen if Greece abandoned the euro area,
Since the beginning of last week, the Greek government and the creditors were holding talks literally day and night but the Greek delegation left them late at night on Friday, June 26.
Right after that, Alexis Tsipras declared a referendum on the country’s relations with the international creditors. More than that, he recommended the Greek voters to vote against the creditors’ recommendations on new measures of economic austerity, which they set forth as a term for granting further aid to the country.
The referendum has been scheduled for July 5.
The cancelation of talks has made the threat of the Greek government’s default on the IMF loans a looming reality. The creditors who had an emergency meeting of the Eurogroup on Saturday refused to prolong the international programme of financial aid for a third time in the absence of agreement of programme of reforms in Greece.
With a big degree of probability, this may lead up to a non-repayment of 1.6 billion euro on to the IMF on June 30, which will make any further loans to Athens on the part of the fund impossible before Athens pays off the debt.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Saturday Greece would be pressing for an agreement with creditors until the very last minutes on Tuesday, June 30, in spite of the decision to stop talks with it and the Eurogroup’s refusal to prolong the aid programmes.
He indicated that if an agreement was signed somehow, the government would urge the Greek voters to support it in the July 5 referendum.