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Two rounds of talks between Greece and the eurozone over Greece's €240 billion bailout have ended in failure, but now Greece is reportedly poised to seek a loan extension.
The twists and turns of the saga have been hard to follow, so here's everything you need to know about Greece and what it wants from international creditors.
Why won’t Greece just sign up for a bailout extension?
Because Greece’s Syriza Party fought a general election only last month on a firm promise to repudiate the terms of that bailout. And it won a clear victory.
They claim that the bailout, agreed in 2010 with the EU and the International Monetary Fund, has been an economic disaster for Greece, shrinking its GDP by a quarter and pushing unemployment above 25%.
That’s an economic performance as bad as America’s during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
How much does Greece owe?
€322bn. That’s equal to 174% of the country’s annual GDP, up from 170%in 2011.
The shocking thing is that the nominal value of Greece’s national debt has come down from €368bn in that time, thanks to a 2012 debt write-off agreed by the country’s creditors.
But the collapse of the Greek economy has meant that as a share of GDP the debt burden has actually increased.
Athens points to that perverse effect as more evidence of the failure of the bailout.
So what does Athens want instead of a bailout extension?
A bridge loan from its creditors to tide them over until the summer.
Greece says it wants to use the grace period to renegotiate its support package entirely.
They are demanding a reduction in the face value of the debt owed to other eurozone states and a large reduction in the budget surpluses it is compelled to run indefinitely.
Greece claims that without this overhaul, the domestic economy will remain a basket case.
Why are the creditors demanding an extension?
The rest of the eurozone feels they cannot allow Greece to repudiate the terms of its earlier bailout as this would set a disastrous precedent, encouraging other struggling eurozone members to seek debt forgiveness.
They also want to keep the pressure on Athens to continue enacting painful and necessary structural economic reforms and fear that agreeing to renegotiate the financial terms of the bailout would enable Greece to renege on this aspect of the deal too.