Sceptical European finance ministers gathered yesterday to decide whether to negotiate a third bailout for Greece after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won his Parliament’s backing for painful austerity measures his leftist Syriza party was elected to prevent.

With Athens staring at a bankruptcy that could see it crash out of the eurozone after financial markets reopen tomorrow, EU officials forecast agreement would be reached by the end of the weekend to keep Greece afloat, but not before ministers and government leaders had vented their wrath at Mr Tsipras.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Finance Minister of its biggest creditor Germany and a veteran stickler for the EU’s fiscal rules, said negotiations would be “exceptionally difficult”.

Since Tsipras’s leftist government won power in January, he said, emerging optimism about Greece had been “destroyed in an incredible way in the last few months”.

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna told The Sunday Times of Malta that re-establishing trust between Greece and its creditors was the biggest issue on the table at yesterday’s eurogroup meeting.

Prof. Scicluna said he did not foresee problems of a technical nature since the cash-for-reforms plan put forward by the Greek government was largely a re-hash of the proposals which were on the table last week, before the Greek referendum.

Reaching a deal would very much depend on whether creditor countries were convinced the Greek government would deliver on its promises, Prof. Scicluna said.

“It is clear why doubts still persist. We have a very strange situation involving a government that has put forward a reforms plan that is more ambitious than the packet it campaigned against only last week,” the minister said.

Prof. Scicluna said the Greek government’s change of heart was probably a result of the realisation that the alternative to a deal represented an “ugly” predicament for society and the economy.

Greek banks have been closed for almost two weeks and withdrawals have been capped at €60 per day from cash machines.

“It is positive that the Greek Prime Minister has changed the Finance Minister and achieved cross-party backing in Parliament for his plan, but Eurogroup countries would need to be assured that Cabinet ministers will have the energy and willingness to implement the reforms,” he said.

Asked whether a debt haircut – forgiving part or all existing loans – was on the agenda, Prof. Scicluna said the terminology being used was debt relief. “Debt relief can range from a drastic haircut to relaxing the terms of maturity,” he said.

Malta has opposed a haircut along with Germany and many other eurozone countries but was willing to consider more flexible repayment terms.

Greece asked for €53.5 billion to help cover its debts until 2018, a review of primary budget surplus targets in the light of the sharp deterioration of its economy, and a “reprofiling” of the country’s long-term debt.

A summit of EU leaders will be held today on the Greek bailout.