Luxembourg: Eurozone finance ministers will meet on Monday in advance of an emergency summit on Greece, Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said, in hopes of having a first look at new Greek proposals before they are presented to the countries` leaders.
"Additional Eurogroup meeting at 1500 (1300 GMT) on Monday 22 June in Brussels to prepare eurozone summit," Dijsselbloem, who is also the Dutch finance minister, said in a tweet on Friday.
EU President Donald Tusk called a summit of the leaders of the 19 eurozone countries on Monday in Brussels after the Eurogroup meeting on Thursday failed to break a five-month-old deadlock between the government in Athens and its EU-IMF creditors.
"It`s very important that this is first prepared on the technical level because we need to have some kind of a proposal on the table for the euro summit," Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb said Friday at a meeting of the EU`s 28 member states.
Any proposal to end a bitter cash-for-reforms row would first require technical approval by teams of experts from the institutions overseeing Greece`s bailout -- the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank.
"First we need a technical proposal, and then a Eurogroup and then the euro summit," Stubb said.
But several rounds of technical talks have failed in the months since Syriza came to power in January, with Athens insisting that any agreement be negotiated at a more senior political level.
A source close to the negotiations said Athens had made no outreach to the institutions since the last round of talks broke off suddenly on Sunday although Greece says it has put forward proposals for consideration.
"It`s very much for them to come forward," the source said.
Austrian Finance Minister Hans Jorg Schelling insisted that a succesful summit would require firm proposals by Athens.
"Calling a summit that will not be prepared... I don`t find that very constructive," Schelling said.
"We don`t know if Greece is going to make a move and make new proposals. Taking this to the political level, as Greece does, is obviously a double-edged sword," he added.
