German Federal Bank

The situation in Greece is critical but the direct danger to European banks is relatively small, a senior official at Germany's Bundesbank told a newspaper on Monday.

Α mini scrum of top European leaders on Friday dampened the leftist Greek government’s hopes for a bailout deal in the next few days, despite smiles and “positive leaks” in the wake of a late-night meeting the previous evening between Angela Merkel, Francoise Hollande and Alexis Tsipras.

May 18 Greece's government should stick to earlier commitments and present reform proposals to help avoid the country becoming insolvent, Germany's central bank warned on Monday.

In its monthly report, written by economists and officials at the bank, the Bundesbank used unusually frank language to describe what it called the «worrying» situation in Greece.

The head of Germany's Bundesbank ripped into the European Central Bank on Thursday, saying emergency funding for Greek banks broke the taboo of financing governments and it was not up to central banks to decide who was or wasn't in the euro zone.

The head of Germany's Bundesbank criticised the weekly top-ups of emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to Greek banks, saying in a German newspaper interview that this broke the taboo of financing governments.

By John O'Donnell & Frank Siebelt

Greek Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis meets European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on Tuesday, as his government seeks financial breathing room to prevent a default and stay in the euro.

The provision of European Central Bank emergency liquidity to Greece is ?directly correlated? to the health of its banks and will continue as long as the preconditions are met, a top policymaker from Germany?s Bundesbank said on Tuesday.

Bundesbank board member Andreas Dombret declined to say how the ECB should respond if Greece defaulted.

Noted US-based Indian economist Ashoka Mody, the IMF's former chief of mission to Ireland during the latter's bailout, took his former employer to task for its Greek programme, essentially saying that the organization merely participated in a scheme to guarantee German and French banks' exposure in Greece onto institutional lenders.

Additional Eurozone assistance to indebted Greece is dependent on Athens improving the state of its finances, German central bank executive Andreas Dombret said in Johannesburg on Friday.

In his interview to German magazine “Focus”, the chief of Bundesbank Jens Weidmann stresses that the Greek government has already lost to certain extend lenders trust while he further expressed his opinion that time is running out in order to find a solution on the Greek issue.