Greece’s crisis is approaching a potential breaking point after a year of relative calm, as a government with declining political stamina confronts creditors’ unyielding demands, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ruling left-wing Syriza party, grappling with slumping popularity, is considering the option of calling snap elections in 2017, as it loses hope of winning concessions on debt relief or austerity from the eurozone and International Monetary Fund.

The eurozone and the International Monetary Fund are at loggerheads in their attempts to reach a deal that would allow the IMF to join the EU’s €86bn bailout of Greece, the Financial Times reported. Talks between euro area ministers and the IMF on Monday broke up with little headway having been made in resolving splits over the programme, despite ministers approving a set of “short-term” debt relief measures for Greece.

Greece’s finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos believes Greece has a good chance of escaping its seemingly endless debt crisis by 2018 – provided it gets a helping hand in coming months from Germany over debt relief, the International Monetary Fund over austerity, and the European Central Bank on bond-buying, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels blog reported. If the eurozone continues to delay the resolution of festering problems such as the Greek debt question, then more voters will conclude that Europe’s existing political order isn’t working, he argued.

Greece’s finance minister warned Germany and other creditors to agree on a debt restructuring in coming weeks, or miss the best chance to bring his struggling country’s seven-year crisis to an end. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos’s comments, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama visited Athens, where he backed calls for Greek debt relief. Mr. Obama continued his European trip in Berlin on Thursday. German leaders including finance chief Wolfgang Schäuble have said Greece’s debt can be addressed at a later date. Mr.

Greece's prime minister told his new cabinet on Sunday that Athens "can and will" conclude its second bailout review in time for long-awaited debt relief talks to begin in December, Reuters reported. Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his government on Friday and urged his ministers to work hard to rapidly complete the review, which includes labor reforms and fiscal issues Athens has agreed to implement under its bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

A wave of protests against home repossessions has swept Greece in recent weeks, prompting fears for the safety of workers carrying out the forced transfers and threatening plans to clean up the country’s banking system, The Wall Street Journal reported. The rise in sometimes-violent activism by leftist groups comes as banks in Europe’s most depressed economy push to resume seizures and auctions of properties, especially commercial real estate, to pare their books of bad loans.

Greece and its creditors start a fresh round of talks this week on reforming its labour market, a tricky task for a leftist government sliding in opinion polls but needed if the recession-hit state can ever win debt relief, Reuters reported. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was re-elected a year ago promising to fight to revive collective bargaining and resist reforms that may lower the minimum wage.

The consensus from countless currency trades is that the harder the Brexit, the poorer the British and the weaker their currency. At least this is easier than having to drive down wages. Greece, another country revealed blow by punishing blow to be poorer than it thought, might envy the stabilising influence of the UK’s falling pound. Perhaps — but Greece’s problems run far deeper than having too rigid a currency, the Financial Times reported. Harder to believe is that underneath all this bargaining is an economy in any shape to grow rapidly any time soon.

Good news coming out of the dismal mess of the Greek economy and its international bailout has been a rare commodity over the past six years, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. So it is tempting to celebrate the decision of the eurogroup of finance ministers that Athens has done enough structural reform to receive the latest €2.8bn tranche of its bailout. In practice, a quiet measure of relief would be more appropriate than unbridled joy.

Greece has completed a set of key economic overhauls, eurozone finance ministers agreed Monday, marking the end of the first review of its fiscal bailout and clearing the way for disbursement of new loans to Athens, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ministers, who were here for their monthly meeting, gave their blessing to €2.8 billion ($3.12 billion) in the next stage of financial aid, but they stopped short of signing off on it immediately.