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The Greek negotiating team is facing problems and seems to be divided into two camps. Associates to Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis Nikos Teoharakis and Elena Panariti left for Brussels on Friday to take part in the Eurogroup meeting today. George Houliarakis, who is the main negotiator for Greece in the Eurogroup had remained in Athens and left for Brussels yesterday to take part in today's meeting.

Meanwhile, the text presented in Brussels is described by interlocutors of Varoufakis as "the work of Elena Panariti", which aims to transfer to her any problems in the progress of negotiations. In any case, according to sources, this text was drawn up in the absence of George Houliarakis who was absent from the ministry for a week for health reasons.

Elena Panariti

There is another interesting fact. Last week, Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel had a long conversation in connection with the interim evaluation of the Greek programme of 10 December on the part of the European Commission. Therefore, in the following days, the Ministry of Finance was also preparing a plan of measures, remaking the texts of the former supervisory Troika to find common ground for new measures. However, according to sources, none of this is contained in the texts presented in Brussels by the messengers of Yanis Varoufakis.

At the same time, a publication of the agency Bloomberg states that the case of Greece had caused internal conflicts in the European Central Bank.

The conflict broke out in connection with the order of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) to Greek banks not to increase their exposure to Greek debt. This action seemed to have provoked the reaction of some members of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, according to whom it would put at risk the carefully drawn up strategy for the management of the Greek crisis.

According to Bloomberg, the Council had initially rejected the proposal of the Single Supervisory Mechanism due to its stringency and accounting for the fact that the European Central Bank was trying to keep the provision of liquidity to Greek banks, but without allowing the conversion of bank assistance into financing of the state (the memorandum of the European Central Bank prohibits the direct financing).

Later, however, the proposal of the Single Supervisory Mechanism was approved and amended, containing not so stringent criteria.

As noted by Bloomberg, despite the fact that the Governing Council has ultimately adopted the proposal of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the disagreements between the supervising body and the governing body reveal the tensions arising from the dual role played by the European Central Bank, namely to be the central bank of the euro area on the one hand and the supervisor of its banks on the other.