BRUSSELS (MNI) – The outcome of French presidential elections in
three months won’t derail the efforts being made to put the Eurozone on
a sound fiscal footing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday
night following the summit of European leaders here.

Merkel, asked at a press briefing how concerned she was about
current French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s assertion that France would
not be able to ratify the fiscal pact before the elections, said, “I
think no one will be able to get the ratification of the fiscal pact in
parliament by the end of April…that is no remarkable situation.”

The French presidential election will take place in two rounds, the
first on April 22 and the runoff on May 6. Sarkozy has consistently been
trailing Socialist Party challenger Francois Hollande in opinion polls.

Merkel said Europe “actually functions very well” if one considers
that it always hinges on continuity between its respective political
leaders and their eventual successors. She noted that she had “naturally
continued” the EU entry negotiations with Turkey that were initiated by
the coalition of parties that preceded her in office.

“That is the only way Europe can function, so therefore I am quite
calm about how the [French] elections will turn out,” she said. “Europe
could not function at all if, with every election, everything that had
already been decided was called into question.”

Merkel stressed the “two particularities” that differentiate Greece
from Ireland and Portugal, the other two Eurozone countries in EU-IMF
bailout programs. One of them is the private sector involvement in a
debt haircut, “because the debt sustainability of Greece is particularly
bad,” she said.

The other unique aspect of Greece is “the question of its
non-adherence to the program,” which she said warrants greater efforts
at verifying and supervising Greek implementation.

“That was not the case with the others but it was with Greece. So
Greece is a special case,” she said, noting a “certain…frustration”
with the situation.

To close the gap between the current trajectory of Greek finances
and the goal of getting Greece’s debt ratio down to 120% of GDP by 2020,
Merkel said, “we must find a way through more actions of the Greek
government and more contributions of private creditors, and that is
being negotiated now, and I cannot say more…To be honest, this evening
it was not at all discussed.”

–Frankfurt bureau tel.: +49-69-720142. Email: dbarwick@marketnews.com

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