"We want Greece to stay in the euro, but we insist that Greece sticks to commitments that it has agreed to", German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
Three officials said the instruction to have plans in place for a Greek exit was agreed during a teleconference of the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG) - experts who work for eurozone finance ministers. The Greek finance ministry denied there was any such agreement but Belgian Finance Minister, Steven Vanackere, said: "All the contingency plans (for Greece) come back to the same thing: to be responsible as a government is to forsee even what you hope to avoid".
Although EU leaders' minds will have been focused by that prospect, disagreements have flared over a plan for mutual eurozone bond issuance and other measures to alleviate two years of debt turmoil, such as giving countries like Spain an extra year to make the spending cuts demanded of them. "The idea is to put energy into the growth motor. All the member countries don't necessarily share my ideas. But a certain number expressed themselves in the same direction", new French President, François Hollande, told reporters.
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