Galery

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At a time when Brussels talks are stalling, government representatives and SYRIZA members are firing last-hour warning shots against the creditors.

"Unless the Europeans back down, we will end up with a credit event in a fortnight," warned SYRIZA MP Nikos Manios on SKAI TV. As regards the publications alleging that the Deputy Defence Minister, Nikos Toskas, used a helicopter of the National Centre for Immediate Social Assistance to travel to Egio for a meeting with Russian investors, Manios said he was "against such practices."

"I froze when I heard about the 15-day deadline of Mr. Manios," said Christina Tahiau, MP from Potami.

"If we reach an impasse, Pandora's box will burst open, and the economic and geopolitical instability will increase internationally," warns in his turn State Minister Alekos Flambouraris in Sunday’s Avgi.

"One step forward, two steps back in Brussels," fulminates Manolis Glezos’ Movement for Active Citizens on its web page. It also has a picture with a poster reading "Not a single step back!".

"Greece cannot keep moving only driven by the panic and terror of the one-way street and without any protection, or by catastrophic doctrines recommending it to have foreign patrons. Under their authority, the country has repeatedly faced national and economic tragedies," says the Minister of Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy, Panagiotis Lafazanis, in a Sunday interview for Kathimerini.

Meanwhile, the president of the Hellenic Bank Association and governor of the National Bank, Louka Katseli, came up with a dramatic message to the government urging it to complete negotiations with the creditors. "We all are at the end of our tether; an agreement must be concluded, and mutual concessions should be made by both the partners and the government," she said on TV Alpna, and added that "The Greek banking system is on its last legs."

"We hope to see an agreement, which will remove the hurdles before the banking system’s financing through securities, because the banks today are only getting their funding from the European Central Bank, through the emergency liquidity assistance (ELA)", Katseli said.

She also dubbed the problems in the negotiations ‘birth pangs’.

On the delayed pensions last week, Katseli said technical glitches were to blame, but the scale of controversy shows how anxious society is now.

In turn, senior market factors sounded the alarm in Kathimerini on Sunday, appealing for agreement with creditors ASAP.