Deal on home protection bill remains far off

The crucial negotiating table for the new protection system for borrowers’ homes will likely be Monday’s Euro Working Group, as talks continued on Friday with another conference call that failed to achieve convergence.

“We are not moving very fast,” a European source told Kathimerini, adding that there was no visible solution on the horizon.

The same source added that while there was the sense that a solution was near at the last Eurogroup, the distance appears to have grown since. Another European source confirmed that “we have some way to go before we find a commonly accepted solution.”

In any case, even the most optimistic observers would not give an agreement any more than a 50 percent chance ahead of Monday’s EWG meeting. The most likely scenario is that of a standoff in the coming days, up until the April 5 Eurogroup meeting in Bucharest that will decide on the disbursement of the 1 billion euros due to Athens.

The government’s threat of submitting the bill in Parliament with or without a deal had not materialized by late on Friday. Government sources noted that Athens’s aim is to reach an agreement with and not clash with the creditors, but added that the ball is in the eurozone’s court.