Greece offered some concessions yesterday on reforms demanded by international lenders in return for new funding before Athens runs out of money, but eurozone creditors said negotiations needed to speed up to get a deal by June.

After talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday in Brussels, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he wanted a deal by the end of this month. Merkel, in a comment seen as underlining the determination of Europe’s main paymaster to keep Greece in the eurozone, said “everything must be undertaken to prevent” Athens running out of cash.

In a blog published as eurozone finance ministers met in Riga to assess progress on a reform-for-cash package to ward off a Greek default, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis agreed to some of the lenders’ conditions, still declaring that the eurozone must drop “an approach that has failed”.

“The current disagreements with our partners are not unbridgeable,” Varoufakis wrote in the blog. Our government is eager to rationalise the pension system (for example, by limiting early retirement), proceed with partial privatisation of public assets... create a fully independent tax commission,” Varoufakis said.

Those reform pledges could ease tensions following three months of largely-fruitless talks since radical leftists won power in Athens on a promise to reverse austerity and renegotiate Greece’s €240 billion bailout package.

European Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said there would not be a deal in the Latvian capital and told Greece to accelerate its work on a reform list.

Eurozone must drop its failed approach to Greece

Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, who confessed to being “just a bit tired” of the Greek saga, said the end of June was now the final date for a deal because Greece’s bailout expires then.

Already investors are looking to the next finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels on May 11, but several eurozone officials said they do not expect a deal then, either. Greece is due to pay €750 million back to the IMF the following day.

“There is a great sense of urgency for all of us. I have spoken to my colleagues in Athens and they’re very determined to get the deal. They know that the time is running out,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the Eurogroup of Ministers.

The impact of a potential Greek default is the biggest risk to the eurozone’s economic recovery after a long crisis from which the 19-nation currency area is finally emerging.

Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling insisted Greece would stay in the eurozone and EU officials believe Athens can scrape together enough cash to meet its payment obligations into June.

Asked about the danger of a ‘Grexit’, Schelling told reporters: “There is no exit from the euro, only from the EU.”