The European Central Bank’s (ECB) governing council on Wednesday continued its “Chinese water torture” by increasing the cap on emergency liquidity (ELA) by a mere 200 million euros for Greece’s systemic banks, even as Athens had requested 1.1 billion.

The total limit now is 80.2 billion euros.

The hike was the smallest since the ECB first put the brakes on liquidity towards Greek banks in late February — the first severe blow to the then new Greek government’s strategy for negotiating with institutional creditors.

Moreover, the council members postponed for next week any decision on altering the discounts applied to the collateral pledged for Bank of Greece loans.

According to Bloomberg, certain ECB members before the meeting expressed a view that the “existing level of ELA was sufficient to meet Greek banks’ needs, as deposit outflows stabilized in the past week.”