GREEK government leaders’ charm-offensive tour of European capitals hit a brick wall yesterday when Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis elicited no concessions from his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Mr Schaeuble said that he and Mr Varoufakis had “agreed to disagree” at their meeting in Berlin and that a write-down or haircut of Greece’s debt was not on the negotiating table.

The European Central Bank (ECB) had already tightened the screw on Greece’s new left-wing Syriza government by ending loans to Greek banks that use government bonds as collateral.

Mr Varoufakis had spoken eloquently about the need for European solidarity and told Germany not to humiliate Greece over its debts, but his words failed to move Mr Schaeuble.

Germany is an uncompromising proponent of the strict fiscal discipline that Greece has had to impose in return for loans to prop up its economy after it bailed out overextended foreign, mainly German, banks.

Mr Varoufakis insisted that the Greek government did not intend to default on its debts and wanted to carve out a new compromise deal to the mutual benefit of Germany and Greece.

But Mr Varoufakis said that Athens was looking for a bridging programme between now and the end of May to give room for talks on “a new contract” with the troika of the ECB, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.

Mr Schaeuble renewed offers to help Greece strengthen its tax system and said that some things the new government has announced go in the right direction, such as getting the rich to pay tax and combating corruption.

But he added that some already announced measures “don’t necessarily go in the right direction,” insisting that existing agreements must be met, since “reliability is the condition for confidence.”