Merkel Demands Action From Greece to Cement Euro Membership

08-Jun (Bloomberg) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded urgent action from the Greek government to cement its position as a member of the single currency.

Merkel said that fellow Group of Seven leaders meeting at Schloss Elmau, southern Germany, shared her goal of keeping Greece in the currency bloc and also backed her insistence that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must deliver an economic program that can satisfy the country’s creditors.

“There isn’t much time left, that’s the problem,” Merkel said at a press conference on Monday following the meeting. “Every day counts now.”

Creditors are growing increasingly exasperated with Tsipras’s negotiating tactics after he rejected the terms of an aid package last week that could prevent Greece being forced out of the euro. Tsipras’s government last week used a technicality to postpone a payment of about 300 million euros ($336 million) to the International Monetary Fund, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the Greek leader had misrepresented the creditors’ position in the talks.

[source]