Talks stalling on two points: IMF involvement in a new three-year bailout and a German demand for Greece to give up €50bn in public assets as collateral.
A marathon overnight negotiation between Greece and its creditors remained unresolved on Monday morning after European leaders confronted Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, with a package of austerity measures which entailed a surrender of fiscal sovereignty.
A weekend of high tension that threatened to break Europe in two climaxed on Sunday at a summit of eurozone leaders in Brussels where the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, François Hollande, presented Tsipras with an ultimatum.
The ultimatum – debated over more than 15 hours – entailed a series of draconian measures as the price of avoiding financial collapse and being ejected from the single currency bloc.
Tsipras acquiesced in most of the fiscal rigour demanded of him in four pages of summary instructions drafted by eurozone finance ministers.
But as Monday morning broke over Brussels, he was still resisting the creditors’ demands on two key points: on having the International Monetary Fund (IMF) involved in a proposed new three-year bailout, and on a controversial German demand for Greece to park €50bn (£36bn) in assets outside Greece, probably in Luxembourg, to serve as collateral for fresh loans and to provide privatisation proceeds to be used for debt servicing,