Greek euro membership depends on sticking to agreements

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem warned Greece Monday that its euro membership depended on Athens sticking to prior agreements, after the radical left Syriza party won elections with a vow to renegotiate its debts.
"Membership of the eurozone means that you comply with everything you have agreed with," Dijsselbloem said as he arrived for talks of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels. "On that basis, we're ready to work with them."
Syriza and its 40-year-old leader Alexis Tsipras took 149 seats in the 300-seat parliament in Sunday's election, putting the country on a collision course with its international creditors, especially Germany.
Dijsselbloem played down suggestions that any compromise with Greece could include striking out some of the debts it incurred in exchange for a massive 240-billion-euro ($269 billion) EU-IMF bailout, as Tspiras has vowed.
Greek's debt load stands at a colossal 175 percent of GDP, which many believe is unsustainable.
"Writing off the debt… I don't think there's a lot of support for that within the eurozone," the Dutch finance minister said.
But he added: "We've always said that we will continue to work with them if Greece commits to what we have agreed with them... if necessary, (we can also) refer to debt sustainability and it is too early to say."