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Yesterday's first appearance of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Brussels raised hopes for progress in the negotiations with Greece’s lenders in Athens. In the Belgian capital, however, the mood is different.

In an interview with Dutch public television NOS, chairman of the council of finance ministers of the euro zone member states Jeroen Dijsselbloem said he was pessimistic about the likelihood that an agreement with Greece would be reached at the Eurogroup meeting on Monday.

"The Greeks have very high expectations but the options in view of the current state of the economy are limited," he said, adding, "We grant financial support only when there is progress and new reforms are carried out. This has not happened for months in Greece."

Dijsselbloem recalled that the Greek government insists on not requesting an extension of the current bailout, while the position of the Eurogroup is that changes cannot be made, if its implementation is interrupted.

Meanwhile, in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis said once again that haircutting the government debt is the better and more economical option than the extension of loans to the country. Moreover, he did not hesitate to compare the actions of the supervisory Troika to the CIA torture practices.

"There were good people in the CIA too, who had been unwillingly used in the application of techniques such as waterboarding, due to which they were therefore faced with a terrible moral dilemma," he said, continuing with his theory, "All know that if Greece fails to conclude a new agreement it would not be able to bear the burden of its debt. I understand that the German government wants to avoid the word "haircut". In fact, this is the better option."

It seems however that his words do not find the desired response in Berlin. Today, the spokesman for German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble said that the only path before Greece is the extension of the current bailout programme, adding that only its formal details can be the subject of discussion.

He went on to say that the representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will continue to supervise the implementation of the bailout, whether they will be called supervisory Troika or otherwise. "We will be tolerant to our Greek friends and will not call it Troika but it will continue to play its role. We want Greece to request an extension of the memorandum and when it obtains it, to successfully complete the programme," he said.

Indicative of the course of the talks at the extraordinary meeting of the council of finance ministers is the reportage by correspondent of the newspaper Ta Nea in Brussels, "Describing how the Eurogroup meeting went off on Wednesday evening, an experienced EU representative noted that the Greek representatives were not only unable to negotiate with their partners but also to understand what they were telling them."

Meanwhile, according to a report by the global agency Bloomberg, the European Central Bank has sent an appeal to the euro zone leaders to reach an agreement in order for Greek banks to be rescued.

Yesterday the European Central Bank increased the resources of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) by 5 billion euro and its position is that the continuation of the support for Greece depends on the ongoing political negotiations on the future of the bailout. This is because the European Bank does not want to decide on the future of the Greek banking system and therefore on Greece’s remaining in the euro without the backup of political decisions.

According to Bloomberg, if the negotiations on the bailout failed, ECB President Mario Draghi would be forced to decide whether to provide more funds or threaten a veto, as he did in the case of Cyprus in the spring of 2013.