Two letters from Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to creditors on Tuesday came too late to secure an extension to the previous bailout which expired at midnight (2200 GMT), just as Greece defaulted on a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) debt repayment to the IMF.
Tsipras has exasperated fellow leaders by urging voters to reject creditors' now redundant previous offer of terms. His request for a new, third bailout package for two years could trigger the following process once talks resume:
Eurogroup could agree Greece needs financial assistance, not a major doubt given that it is effectively bankrupt and has lost access to financial markets. Ministers could in theory have agreed to launch the bailout process on Wednesday but did not.
Once Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, in his role as chair of the board of governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), accepts an application from Greece, he asks the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, along with the European Central Bank (ECB) to assess it.
The assessment can be lengthy but in this case Commission and ECB officials have already spent months working intensively with the new Greek government to seek a deal to complete the previous bailout. Capital controls imposed this week ahead of the default complicate the economic health check but officials see no difficulty in producing a quick review of Greece's needs.
