CRI听力:European Stocks Drop on Greek Default Fears

Shares on European stock markets have fallen sharply amid reports that senior EU officials have discussed a possible Greek debt default for the first time.

CRI's Poornima Weerasekara reports

The Athens stock exchange closed nearly 6% lower, while Germany's Dax and France's Cac 40 closed more than 1% lower on Friday evening.

Stock markets across Europe tumbled after negotiators from the International Monetary Fund left the negotiating table on Thursday, after talks with the Greek government ended in a stalemate.

Greece is trying to avoid defaulting on a 1.5 billion Euro debt repayment to the IMF due later this month.

The IMF has been pushing for further austerity cuts in return for another bailout.
But Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufa says the country's new anti-austerity government will never agree to such an option.

"Will there be a deal with a new bailout programme?" "No way, no way. We didn't get elected for this."

Athens says it is ready to submit counter-proposals to bridge differences with its creditors at the EU and IMF. But euro zone finance ministers have called Greece's key proposals, which include widening its tax net and clamping down on corruption, as too little too late.

Tensions are high as both sides refuse to budge from their positions. The European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has jokingly called the negotiation room a "torture chamber".

But, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging all parties to stay calm and continue the dialogue.

"With regard to Greece I would just like to say once more again as I already did again and again in the past - where there's a will, there's a way. But the will must come from everybody. And that's why I think it's right that we talk to each other again and again."
Despite this note of strained optimism from political leaders, senior euro zone officials are taking no chances. They have discussed a series of possible scenarios in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, where negotiators have been holed up for days.
They have concluded that there are three possible scenarios, and that the best of them, reaching a deal next week, was the least likely.

The second scenario was a further extension of Greece's current bailout program funded by the EU, which also expires this month.

The third - discussed formally for the first time at such a senior level in the EU - was to accept that Greece could default.

The Bratislava talks have been called to prepare for the final do-or-die negotiations between Greece and its creditors in Luxembourg on June 18.

This is seen as the last chance for Greece to agree to a reforms-for-cash deal worth 7.2 billion euros after five months of fruitless and ill-tempered talks.

If Greece fails to strike a deal at this meeting, it could thrust the cash strapped country towards a default and a catastrophic exit from the euro, with a heavy fall-out on the global economy.

For CRI Poornima Weerasekara