EU loans to Greece may be possible

Europe 'will not desert' people in crisis, no matter how vote goes, Paliament head says

Europe will not "desert" the people of Greece regardless of the outcome of Sunday's referendum and may provide it emergency loans, the head of the European Parliament said on Sunday.

Martin Schulz, European Parliament president, told Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the Athens government had manoeuvred the heavily-indebted country "into a dead end".

"Perhaps we will have to give emergency bridging loans to Greece so that public service can be maintained and needy people get the money they need to survive," he said.

"For that, money would be available short term in Brussels," Schulz said in the interview.

But he warned this would not be a lasting solution.

Whatever the outcome of Greece's knife-edge referendum, Europeans must "start talking to each other again", Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told a newspaper on Sunday.

"When you see a pensioner crying in front of a bank," he said referring to a striking picture taken on Saturday of 77-year-old Giorgos Chatzifotiadis in Greece's second city Thessaloniki, "you realize that a country as important for the world and its culture as Greece cannot end up like this", he told the Il Messaggero daily.

He said as soon as Sunday's vote was over "we must start talking to each other again - no one knows that more than (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel".

Berlin has taken a particularly hard line on Greece, accusing Athens' radical government of walking out on negotiations by calling the referendum.

Renzi, who has tried to steer a middle course between Athens and its creditors, added, "Of course it is impossible to save Greece without the engagement of the Greek government and pension reforms, cracking down on tax evasion and a new labour market."

He insisted that Italy was not likely to be affected by fallout from any eventual Greek implosion. "We are not saying that everything is going to be fine, we only say that the work that has been done in the last few months puts Italy in a (better) condition than it was in the past. We are no longer in the dock, we are no longer spoken of in the same breath as our unfortunate Greek friends."