European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wants to scrap the Troika mission from international lenders that governs Greece's 320 billion euros bailout,German dailyHandelsblatt reported.
"We have to find an alternative quickly," it quoted Commission sources as saying.
According toHandelsblatt, Germany is also ready to cede some ground. Berlin was also prepared to reform arrangements between the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Athens, seen by its new government as "insulting" to Greek sovereignty, and establish more general economic targets, the paper quoted unnamed German government sources as saying.
However, this would only be possible if Athensaccepted the need to stick to previously agreed reform and savings targets, the German business newspaper said.
The new left-wing government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said it wants to end the bailout deal and will not cooperate with troika inspectors in Athens.
It says it wants to negotiate directly with European authorities and the IMF over a new accord that will allow a reduction in its debt, which is equivalent to more than 175 percent of its gross domestic product.
Juncker, who is due to meet Tsipras in Brussels on Wednesday, had previously said he was not prepared to accept any direct write-off of Greece's public debt.
Greece's new government on Sunday offered to produce proposals within a month for a revised debt agreement with its sceptical international partners, insisting it would not take on any more loan tranches in the meantime.
Meanwhile, the Greek Finance ministerYanis Varoufakisis on adiplomatic offensivethrough the major EU capitals. In Paris, he met his French counterpart Michel Sapin with whom he discussed the possibility of crafting a deal, possibly including some alleviation of its debt load but no outright cancellation.
Varoufakis said Athens had allowed itself to become addicted to debt, now at 175 % of output."It isn't that we don't need the money, we are desperate," Varoufakis, standing next to Sapin, told reporters.
"For the last five years,Greecehas been living for the next loan tranche. We have resembled drug addicts craving the next dose. What this government is all about is ending the addiction," he said, noting it was time to go "coldturkey".
Setting out a possible timetable to renegotiate its 240 billion euro bailout, Varoufakis said that if Athens was given till the end of the month to prepare proposals, it could aim to hammer out a realistic agreement with partners six weeks later.
While it would not take on any new loans during that time, the Greek state would seek to agree liquidity with the European Central Bank during that time.
Insisting that there was no question ofGreeceexiting theeuro zone, Sapin renewed Paris's offer to help broker a new deal between Athens and its European and other partners, but ruled out outright debt cancellation.
"Anything that can alleviate the Greek debt burden will be welcome ... but of course there is no question of cancelling the Greek debt," Sapin said, noting that that would simply shift the burden from the Greek taxpayer to other European taxpayers.
Greece's ruling Syriza party says cash reserves are enough to meet obligations of 3.5 billion euros over the February-March period, but a further total of 1.5 billion in principal and interest fall due in June with further payments of 4.7 billion in July and 3.6 billion in August.
Varoufakis met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Friday. He is in London to see British Finance Minister George Osborne today and travels to Rome on Tuesday.
The new Greek government also got unexpected backing from Barack Obama. The American president,as theWSJ reported, has "expressed sympathy for the new Greek government as it seeks to rollback its strict bailout regime, saying there are limits to how far its European creditors can press Athens to repay its debts while restructuring the economy."
“You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression. At some point there has to be a growth strategy inorder for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria aired Sunday.
He said Athens needs to restructure its economy to boost its competitiveness, “but it’s very hard to initiate those changes if people’s standards of livings are dropping by 25%. Over time, eventually the political system, the society can’t sustain it.”
“More broadly, I’m concerned about growth in Europe, ” he added. He said fiscal prudence and structural changes are important in many eurozone countries, but “what we’ve learned in the U.S. experience...is that the best way to reduce deficits and to restore fiscal soundness is to grow. And when you have an economy that is in a free-fall there has to be a growth strategy and not simply the effort to squeeze more and more from a population that is hurting worse and worse.”
In a tweet on Saturday, Varoufakis urged "journalists scurrilously portraying me as anti-German" to read a 2013 post titled 'Europe Needs a HegemonicGermany' in which he saidGermany should play a bigger role in creating demand for other countries' products.
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(with Reuters, AP, Handelsblatt)
http://www.neurope.eu/article/scrapping-troika-greece-gets-help-unexpected-quarters