Asked in a television interview if he could be sure Greece would not need a third bailout, Juncker said: "You cannot really exclude that, although we should not have as a starting assumption that a third programme will be (needed)."

"We made it clear last Tuesday in Brussels that we are standing ready to support Greece even beyond the time period of this programme but I have good reasons to believe that we should now not engage ourselves in a debate on a 'maybe' third programme. We should now ... implement the second one," he said, interviewed by David Frost on Al Jazeera.

Asked about some experts' view that a Greek default is inevitable, Juncker said: "I don't see that Greece would go for a default."

The euro zone was doing everything to avoid a disorderly default by Greece, which would have had "tragic consequences, not only for Greece, but for the whole euro area as such," he said.

On whether Greece would succeed in staying in the euro zone, Juncker said: "You can never exclude a new crisis although I do consider that, being at the epicentre of the global threat, we are slowly regaining safe territory."

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