BERLIN (MNI) – German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a
newspaper interview released Tuesday reaffirmed his stance that the
involvement of the IMF in the problems of a Eurozone member state should
be an exception.
“A currency zone should solve its own problems,” Schaeuble told
German weekly Die Zeit in an interview to be published Wednesday.
Yet the Minister noted that the German public would more easily
accept a solution for Greece that included the IMF. “The IMF is seen as
an institution that has proven it can work towards [economic]
restructuring in a crisis,” he said. This is a confidence-building
element that should be taken seriously, he argued.
Eurozone leaders last Thursday agreed on a contingency aid package
consisting of IMF financing and coordinated bilateral loans from
Eurozone states, but only as a last resort.
In the Die Zeit interview, Schaeuble declined to say how large the
IMF’s share in any financial package would be. “This is a question that
a finance minister wisely should not answer because we assume that the
case will not come true,” he said. In any event, the IMF’s share would
be “limited,” he said.
German weekly Der Spiegel reported over the weekend that the IMF
would have to contribute up to E12 billion to a potential emergency aid
for Greece. The Eurozone states would have to finance the remaining
share of the aid package whose full amount was tabled by the magazine at
up to E25 billion. Those figures imply the IMF would be an equal partner
with the Eurozone in any financing of Greece.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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