Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this evening that it was ‘likely’ that Greece would require humanitarian help as it ran out of supplies because suppliers were not being paid.

Dr Muscat was speaking in Parliament about yesterday’s emergency eurozone summit.

He confirmed that Greece has submitted a request to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for a loan but said that so far no proposals had been received for a new bailout, although Greece has promised to do so tomorrow.

Replying to a question by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, Dr Muscat said he had been more optimistic of a solution two weeks ago than now. 

The biggest problem, he said, was ‘the enormous trust gap’. One lent money to those whom one trusted, he said, but how could one trust someone who promised to submit a new proposal, and did not do so on time?

The current suspicions, he said, also stemmed form the fact that the Greeks had said that their new proposals would not be much different from the package there was before. So why had they called the referendum, he asked.

That had caused a lot of time wastage. He pointed that the German government, for example, would have to go before parliament to authorise fresh talks with the ESM, and again go before parliament once, and if agreement was reached.

Malta did not have such a procedure as long as there was no disbursement of funds, and it was highly likely that any new lending to Greece would be made through the ESM and not national funds.

Dr Muscat reiterated that Malta, like most other countries, was against writing off the debt but could be flexible in the lending conditions. 

Dr Muscat reiterated Malta’s view that as far as possible, Greece should be kept in the eurozone. He also stressed that Maltese domestic banks had little to no exposure regarding Greece.