–Adds Comments By German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble
BERLIN (MNI) – Finland opposes any easing of the conditions of the
reform program for Greece, Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen
told German regional daily Rheinische Post in a newspaper interview
published Wednesday.
“What has been agreed must be adhered to,” Urpilainen was quoted by
the paper. “This has already been the very clear message to Greece,” she
said.
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.”
The parliamentary leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
center-right CDU/CSU bloc, Volker Kauder, told Spiegel online on
Wednesday that giving Greece more time to meet its fiscal consolidation
goals would cost a lot of money. Kauder said he does not think that “we
will come to changes here.”
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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