Post date: Feb 06, 2012 2:25:33 PM
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (RECENT) (REUTERS) - Greece has already gone beyond the deadline for finalising talks on the second financing package from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund and Athens needs to urgently take decisions, the European Commission said on Monday (February 6).
The EU executive tells Greece the ball is in its camp as the country lets another deadline slip in bailout talks.
Greece's coalition parties were expected to tell the European Union on Sunday whether they accept the painful terms of a second bailout deal. A socialist party spokesman then said leaders of the three coalition parties must respond by noon (1000 GMT) on Monday.
That deadline passed too without any agreement.
"We have gone beyond the deadline. We had hoped that the necessary decisions would have been made this weekend at the latest. We hoped that there would be a Eurogroup meeting. This has not been the case," Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio told a regular news briefing.
He said the Greek authorities had still to take the necessary decisions.
"We felt that we should reached a conclusion sometime now. We keep on working... I can't be more specific, I am sorry, but decisions need to be taken and the ball is in the court of the Greek authorities," Altafaj-Tardio said.
Greece is negotiating a deal to secure a second EU/IMF bailout package worth 130 billion euro ($170 billion).
Greece needs the money by mid-March if it wants to avoid a chaotic debt default which could threaten its future in the euro zone.