Two senior G7 officials said some of the toughest language during the recent closed-door summit session on the global economy held in Bavaria came from Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister.

According to one of the officials, Mr Harper urged a deal but said he wondered “how you put up with Greece”.

Exactly.

Or, to put it in a more trenchant way in the words of Francesco Giavazzi, professor of economics at the Bocconi University of Milan, “The Greeks chose poverty – let them have their way’’.

We may be speaking on our own behalf and maybe of that of our readers. But we are sure we express the sentiments of millions of Europeans who have had it up to here with the Greeks.

The past months since the election win for Syriza have been wasted months, with talks that got nowhere, with an ever deteriorating situation, with money disappearing through the banking system, with diminishing government revenue and with no hope of getting anything right.

Even before the ele3ction, the five years of hard negotiations had yielded meager results and the few reforms that were made have now been reversed by the Syriza government.

Greece now has a per capita income half that of Ireland, less than that of Slovenia. In a few years it will be overtaken by Chile.

Since Greece joined the monetary union, the EU has lent Greece €400 bn, 1.7 times the country’s gross domestic product in 2013. Europe must now understand this sum will never be repaid.

There have been innumerable meetings and conferences and summits about Greece which have led nowhere. Instead of focusing on employment, or immigration, or even the challenge posed by Vladimir Putin, the EU’s attention has been hijacked by a country that represents 1.8% of the Eurozone’s economic output. It is as if President Obama spent meetings after meetings on the state of Tennessee.

Giavazzi’s point is very valid. In a democratic election the Greeks chose to be governed by a government that promised them the end of austerity, to redress the steps taken by the preceding government, and to force back some badly-needed privatization programmes.

If in so doing the Greeks show they do not want to modernize their economy, the rest of the continent must accept and allow them to do so.

The fact remains that without economic and social reform, Greece will remain a relatively poor country.

The EU must now make it crystal clear that without serious reforms there will be no more official loans. The only way for Athens to borrow will be to convince the markets that it can pay its own bills. Thus, no more EU guarantees.

The coming days, weeks, maybe months, will be traumatic for the Greeks, less so for the rest of the continent which has had time to prepare itself. With its coffers empty, with pensions and wages waiting to be paid, loans waiting to be repaid and cheap borrowing from institutions such as IMF and ECB cut off by the Greek intransigence, the ones who will suffer will be the Greeks themselves.

Greece seriously risks becoming the EU’s first failed state, the first country from the first world to default on an IMF loan.

The Greeks have a habit of blaming others – the troika, Germany, Angela Merkel – but the time has now come to call their bluff.