Dijsselbloem: Many running out of understanding for Greece

The chairman of the council of Eurozone finance ministers warned on Tuesday that Europe was running out of understanding for Greece and said referendums in the 18 other members of the currency area would have shown reluctance to give it more money.

In an interview with Dutch television's Nieuwsuur, extracts of which were played ahead of broadcast, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister, said he wanted Greece to have the support it needed but said its government had made this difficult.

"You have to realise that if we'd held referendums in the other 18 countries on whether we should give more money to Greece, the result would have been much more striking and more negative than the 60 percent who voted in Greece," he said.

Eurozone governments agreed after a series of long and tempestuous meetings in Brussels at the weekend to give the debt-burdened country more than 80 billion euros in loans to keep it afloat and avoid an exit from the euro currency area, a week after Greeks rejected a similar offer in a referendum.

[Reuters]