BRUSSELS — Eurozone finance ministers are meeting here on Friday for the latest round of emergency talks aimed at breaking the deadlock with Greece, a day after Germany rejected a request by Athens to extend a critical loan program.
The meeting — the third of its kind in two weeks — comes as the anti-austerity government in Athens continues to balk at German demands that it abide by the terms of a bailout program a previous government agreed to in 2012. Many Greeks blame the cost-cutting requirements of that loan program for their country’s economic woes and high unemployment.
–
“I think they’ve now reached a point where they will tell Greece ‘if you really want to leave, leave,’” Finance Minister Edward Scicluna of Malta was reported by the website of the Malta Today weekly as saying on Friday. “And I think they mean it because Germany, the Netherlands and others will be hard, and they will insist that Greece repays back the solidarity shown by the member states by respecting the conditions.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.
