Grexit From Euro Will Mean No More EU Money for Athens – Martin Schulz

Dropping out of the 19-country Eurozone would mean the end of the money flow Greece has been getting from the EU, Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, warned on Saturday.

"You can’t just pull out of the euro area, stop paying your debts and expect that EU money will keep flowing in,” Schulz said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Athens is in talks with the EU and the IMF to restructure its €240 billion-plus debt, which piled up after the country was bailed out of an imminent default it faced in 2010 and 2012.

Creditor expectations that austerity measures would enable Greece to start paying up never materialized, and the new Syriza-led government, which came to power in January, insisted on a new round of debt restructuring talks with the creditors.

According to Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the European Commission on Thursday offered Athens one last chance to get desperately-needed financial assistance if it managed to generate an additional 4.5 billion euros in state revenue, collected in part from reforming the country’s pension system and raising the value-added tax.

In an article carried by Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said that on Monday Chancellor Angela Merkel would have to decide whether to clinch an “honorable deal” with the Greek government or “toss overboard” Athens’ economic revival roadmap as demanded by members of her own party.