BERLIN (MNI) – The German government on Wednesday reaffirmed that
the European bailout funds EFSF and ESM won’t be able to buy bonds of
EMU member states on the secondary markets without these countries
applying formally for such aid and accepting the conditions tied to it.
“Such secondary market purchases are foreseen as one of several
instruments in the EFSF as well as in the future ESM,” government
spokesman Georg Streiter said at a regular press conference here. “They
are naturally tied to conditions and there won’t ever be any purchases
without conditions.”
Commenting on Greece, Streiter said Germany expected that the new
government there will abide by the fiscal consolidation and reform
program agreed with the EU, the ECB and the IMF.
Yet, finance ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe said at the same
press conference that regarding the timetable of the consolidation and
reform program “small adaptations can be made, as has been already the
case before.”
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told German weekly Die
Zeit in an interview to be published Thursday that “we did not ask too
much of Greece and we won’t ask too much of Greece.”
ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen, a German national, said
Monday it was too early to tell if Greece should be allowed more time to
meet its goals. One must first see how the new government judges the
state of the economy and the progress on reforms, he explained. Asmussen
also warned that giving Greece more time meant automatically that “there
will be an additional external financial need.”
A senior EU official said Tuesday that Eurozone finance ministers
are expected to open talks on modifying the details of Greece’s second
bailout program because months of political paralysis in the country
have caused reforms to stall.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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