Brussels, 30/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - In the evening of Tuesday 29 November, eurozone finance ministers decided to release the European section of the next instalment of aid to Greece, amounting to some €5.8 billion. The chair of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that they had decided to pay out the sixth instalment of aid under the Greek programme now that the previous requirements have been met. He said that as soon as the IMF has decided on its portion of the aid in early December, then the cash would be sent to Athens mid-month to prevent the country going bankrupt.
The politicians all agreed on the aid, but various conditions needed to be met and they were waiting for the three main political parties in the Greek government of national unity to provide written assurance that they would all respect the commitments made to the second Greek bailout agreed upon at the eurozone summit last month (see EUROPE 10483). Greece's lenders want to make sure that no matter which party wins the February 2012 general elections, the country will continue to implement the austerity programme as planned. The head of the conservative New Democracy Party, Antonis Samaras, which is ahead in the opinion polls, refused to sign for many a month because he had promised to renegotiate various structural adjustment measures set out in the Greek aid programme. In his letter, he says that he backs the overall aims of the programme but some policies would have to be changed (see EUROPE 10502), which the Eurogroup was happy to go along with.
Private sector involvement. Juncker commented on the talks between banks, pension funds and insurance companies and the Greek government over the bond write-downs in the second Greek bailout due at the start of January 2012. He called on both sides to speed up their negotiations so agreement can be reached in January in line with the key decisions of the eurozone summit of halving the face value of the Greek debt and reducing it to 120% of GDP by 2020. (MB/transl.fl)