Brussels, 04/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has taken her turn to stress that the priority for the eurozone is now to conclude the second Greek financial assistance plan, with rumours of a third bailout plan doing the rounds since declarations were made to that effect by Spain.
“We are all working hard to ensure that the second bailout plan is a success”, she said during a visit to the European Commission on Wednesday 4 March. She went on to say that the document containing the Greek reforms approved by the Eurogroup was now to be put into practice. “This is the point we are concentrating on for the time being”, she concluded. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, reiterated her words, stating that any talk of a third bailout plan was “pure intellectual speculation”.
Theoretically, the setting in place of these measures was to be central to the discussions to be held by video conference on Wednesday evening, at a technical meeting of national experts preparing for the Eurogroup meeting of Monday 9 March. During the meeting, Greece intends to present six detailed and evaluated reforms.
In an interview with the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais, Jean-Claude Juncker said that the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, had “taken a fundamental step, he has started to take on his responsibility, but he has a problem: he still has to explain that some of the promises with which he won the elections will not be kept”. “Elections do not change treaties”, he repeated, adding that it was clear that the Greek crisis could be looked at another way. “We could show greater flexibility, but the Tsipras victory does not give us the right to change everything”, said Juncker. He also said that parties such as Syriza or Podemos, its Spanish counterpart which is currently flying high, often analyse the situation realistically, but make proposals which were “not compatible with the European rules and would lead to a situation of complete gridlock”.
It is also worth noting that on Wednesday, Greece raised €1.138 billion in six-month treasury bonds, at a rate of 2.97%, up on the previous month. (Elodie Lamer)