BERLIN (MNI) – Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag,
will vote on the next fiscal aid tranche for Greece only after the
November 20 Eurogroup meeting, which means that a final Eurogroup
decision on the aid payment can likely only be made by end-November,
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday.
“There still does not exist a full report by the troika [of the EU
Commission, ECB and IMF] – there exist extensive information on
individual points,” Seibert said at regular government press conference
here.
“These informations are not a complete troika report and are also
not a basis for the serious decisions which are to be made,” he
stressed. “Only when the complete troika report will be available…can
the Eurogroup make a political decision, and hopefully this will be the
case next week, and only afterwards can national parliaments participate
as required.”
Seibert said the final troika report needed to include a “clear and
unanimous recommendation” by the EU Commission, the ECB and the IMF on
“how we need to deal [with the fact] that the goals in the Greek program
cannot be achieved…because there exists a worse than expected
recession in Greece.” Such an agreement has not yet been reached between
the troika members, he said.
Finance Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe said at the same press
conference that “we all work to keep Greece in the Eurozone.” One option
currently being assessed was to lower the interest rate Greece is paying
on the EU-IMF loans.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also proposed Tuesday in
Brussels to pay out to Greece all three still outstanding fiscal aid
tranches for this year in one single tranche, which would amount to some
E44 billion.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@mni-news.com
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