Brussels, 03/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - In Rome on Tuesday 3 February, where he was meeting his Italian opposite number, Pier Carlo Padoàn, the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, stated that he wants to share his ideas - at a Eurogroup meeting on Wednesday 11 February - on how Greece can be granted “sufficient stability and the fiscal space necessary to begin deliberating with our partners”, the news agency Bloomberg reports.
On Tuesday afternoon, neither the Presidency of the Eurogroup nor the two member states we spoke to were able to confirm to EUROPE that an extraordinary meeting of the finance ministers of the eurozone was to be held. The Commission said that no extraordinary Eurogroup on the eve of the European Summit of 12 February was planned at this stage. However, the question was certainly on everybody's lips and, according to one source, may be confirmed this Wednesday.
Varoufakis and the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, were continuing their tour of European capitals to secure as much support as possible, whilst the Greek government's desiderata over its debt are taking shape. After his trip to Rome, Tsipras will be in Brussels this Wednesday, travelling from there to Paris, whilst Varoufakis will visit the headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt on Wednesday, travelling to Berlin on Thursday to meet the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.
According to reports in the Financial Times, Greece is hoping to replace the loans granted by the Europeans with growth-indexed bonds, and the bonds held by the ECB with 'perpetual' bonds. The idea had already been under discussion in Athens before the elections. The aim will also be to achieve a budgetary surplus of between 1% and 1.5% of GDP, a threshold which is half that which is laid down in the second bailout plan, and to fight tax evasion by all means. Private investors would not be affected in any way. Greece is also reported to be abandoning the idea of calling for haircuts to its public debt stocks.
The Greek debt will be “rendered sustainable, even if we replace a haircut with euphemisms and swaps”; “no U-turn!”, Varoufakis tweeted.
Three of the four major Greek banks are also reported to have started to dip into the emergency fund ('ELA') of the Bank of Greece, to the tune of €2 billion, to face the major level of withdrawals they have faced. As well as the solvency of the Greek state, issues related to the solidity of the Greek banking sector in the event that Athens wraps up the bailout plan is another subject for current talks. In an interview with Reuters, Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, said that the first stage for Greece was to seek an agreement with the ECB on emergency liquidity, and then to accept an extension of the current programme, or to enter into a new one. The ECB is to review the question of emergency liquidity this Wednesday. (EL)