Highlights: European Commission Vice-President Dombrovskis on Greece

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Greece was appealing to its euro zone partners and the European Central Bank on Wednesday to keep it afloat after defaulting on its debt to the International Monetary Fund and losing frozen international bailout money.

The following are comments from European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis at a news conference after the Commission's weekly meeting on Wednesday.

"We stand by the Greek people and the doors for negotiations are open. Many developments so far confirm that important steps have been taken in recent years to make our economic and monetary union more stable and more resilient.

Whatever the course of events in Greece, I'm convinced that the EMU is able to weather them.

As the Eurogroup confirms on 27 June, the euro area authority stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure the financial stability of the euro area.

As you are aware, in the last two days two letters have come from the Greek government with several requests, first a request for two-year European stability mechanism loan, second a request for some debt restructuring measures and third a request of extension of the European Financial Stability Fund program which Greece was in.

As regards debt restructuring, there has been already for many years openness for the Eurogroup to discuss this matter and it's reflected in November 2012 Eurogroup conclusion. This has also been indicated to the Greek authorities.

As regards the request for the ESM loan, there is a procedure under the ESM treaty how this request is evaluated and how, should the Eurogroup decide to support this request, how the negotiations are to be held for the conditionality for the new program.

As regards the contents of the letter, the European Commission is doing the preliminary assessment of this request and will present its analysis to the Eurogroup at the conference call later today.

The previous program has expired. Now we need to start negotiations as regards a new program. But to formally start negotiations we first need a Eurogroup decision to actually agree to this new ESM program. What we are discussing now on both conditionality and prior actions can then be built into this new framework.

Now we are discussing the request for a two-year program in a different economic situation. The situation in Greece, especially the financial situation, is substantially worse than it was until last Saturday. This is certainly a more complicated situation to resolve than it would have been if we would have reached an agreement on the previous program.

As regards the talks that we are having right now, those will potentially build in a conditionality and discussions about the next programs, but to formally start the negotiations, we first need the decision of the Eurogroup agreeing to the Greek government request for a two-year ESM loan. That's on a formal part.

On the political part, President Juncker has said clearly that technically speaking, the question of referendum is not really valid. It's reflecting to negotiations on the program which has expired, and also not really reflecting the state of negotiations, when Greek negotiators left the negotiating table. It's more about political signal, with yes vote being vote for cooperation with Europe, so that we can seek solutions, and no vote being against further cooperation with Europe on those matters.

It's a complicated situation because technically, the question raised is very problematic and not really accurate. It's really now about what political signal is being sent.

Yes, the Commission has discussed those three options, and the decision is to recommend to the member states not to take any immediate action, not to execute the rights which may derive from this event vis a vis GLF or ESFS, but to really wait until the further decisions are taken, as regards the next program. That is the recommendation which the Commission has given. Legally, it's a technical question. We are not recommending any further action but awaiting the outcome of the negotiations."

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Foo Yun Chee, Alexander Saeedy)