Jean-Claude Juncker calls for greater flexibility on Greece

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has called for greater flexibility towards Greece ahead of a meeting with chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande.

Mr Juncker warned that Greece’s problems could not be solved by departing from the existing reform path – nor by slavish adherence to that path.

At a late-night meeting, with surprise guests ECB president Mario Drahi and IMF head Christine Lagarde, Mr Juncker said the latest high-stakes showdown was down to Greece and its creditors “sticking – with millimetre precision – to their agreements”.

"We did not heed enough the social consequences in some countries [and] whoever cannot see that there is a humanitarian crisis in Greece is blind and deaf for what's happening," he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung ahead of his Berlin meeting. "This doesn't mean that we should try a completely different politics."

At a joint press briefing in Berlin, neither Dr Merkel nor Mr Hollande mentioned Greece, hours after a joint telephone conference on Sunday evening with Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras.

Yesterday in Le Monde, the Greek leader argued the standoff over whether to unlock a further €7.2 billion in funds was not down to an "intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance". Instead, he wrote, "it is due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying a total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people".

At last week’s G7 finance ministers’ meeting in Dresden, IMF officials were particularly open in their frustration with Athens and its refusal to lower outgoings by, for instance, pruning top public pensions.

As the second Greek programme enters its final month, there is little sign of any political goodwill towards Athens in Berlin.