EU Says Talks With Greece Over Bailout are Nowhere Near Resolution

European Commission’s vice president plays down possibility of major advances at upcoming eurozone meeting

The Wall Street Journal

By VALENTINA POP and  STEPHEN FIDLER

Updated April 15, 2015 8:21 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS—Greece’s negotiations with international creditors are going very slowly and are nowhere near the point where bailout money can be disbursed, a senior European Union official said.

The Greek government has complained that it will soon run out of cash if no bailout money is disbursed, a development that would raise the prospect of a default on its debt and even an exit from the euro.

“Currently, there is some progress but unfortunately those negotiations were in for a slow start, time is short and there is a lot of ground to be covered,” Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of euro and social dialogue said.

Mr. Dombrovskis travels to Washington this week for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings and an informal gathering of the Group of Seven industrialized countries, where Greece is likely to feature prominently on the agenda.

He played down expectations that a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Riga on April 24 would yield major advances. “The Eurogroup meeting in Riga will be a good occasion to take stock of the state of negotiations as of end-April.”

But for any money of the remaining €7.2 billion ($7.6 billion) bailout tranche to be disbursed, “it really depends on how quickly the Greek side can deliver,” Mr. Dombrovskis said.

A spokeswoman for the German finance ministry also played down prospects for the ministers’ meeting in Riga, saying more bailout funds won’t be paid out this month.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble echoed Mr. Dombrovskis’ skepticism about a swift resolution of the standoff.

“We are waiting on the Greek government,” Mr. Schäuble told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “I don’t expect we will get a solution in the next weeks. we have the next Eurogroup meeting at the end of [the] coming week, but nobody expects that there will be a solution. The key is in Greece, in Athens.”

Mr. Dombrovskis, who as Latvian prime minister oversaw his country’s painful internal devaluation in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis as the first EU country to ask for a bailout, didn't hide his exasperation with Greece.

“There are still many things to be done if we are to achieve substantial progress by end April. The Greek government had a slow start in the negotiations, lots of time was spent on discussing…where the experts will meet and things like that before we went into real negotiations. In recent weeks, we see some more intense engagement, but still those discussions are going very slowly and they are very complicated,” Mr. Dombrovskis said.

He said the onus is on Athens to deliver. “We are ready to move fast. We do not need to reinvent the whole framework, the framework is there… It’s important for the Greek side to step up its efforts,” he said.

Mr. Dombrovskis, who is overseeing the drafting of EU spring economic forecasts due in May, noted that two months ago the commission projected all 28 EU economies would grow this year. “Now we are increasingly having doubts about Greece, but we still expect the economy to grow in all other 27 EU member states,” he said.

—Friedrich Geiger in Berlin also contributed to this article.

Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com