NY Times, Feb. 16 2015 Meeting Over Greek Debt Ends in Acrimony By JAMES KANTER
BRUSSELS — A meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Greece's debt crisis broke up in acrimony Monday evening, further dimming hopes of a speedy resolution to problems that could result in the new Greek government's soon running out of money. In an email to reporters just before the meeting ended, a Greek official dismissed the latest proposal by Greece’s European creditors as “unreasonable and unacceptable.” The proposal had called for Greece to abide by the current terms of its bailout program. Greek officials have been seeking to revise or scrap the current bailout plan to allow them more flexibility in their budgeting plans. The insistence on holding Greece to its prior commitments showed the eurozone ministers were “wasting their time,” wrote the official, who under government policy could not be identified by name. The meeting broke up a short time later, with Greek representatives and eurozone officials heading off to hold dueling news conferences. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance officials, said the group thought Greece should seek an extension of its current bailout program. Even if Greece could persuade its European neighbors to agree to a new program, it would not be strikingly different from the current one and would hold Athens accountable to budget targets. “The rules and regulations talk about strict conditionalities,” Mr. Dijsselbloem told reporters. “It would still be about fiscal sustainability.” He said Greece and its eurozone partners would need more time to reach a deal. The day had not started well. Greek and German officials traded public barbs, and nervous investors sold off Greek stocks and bonds. The European part of Greece’s bailout program is to expire at the end of the month, raising the risk that the country could default on loan repayments and become the first member of the euro currency union to leave it. An emergency meeting of the same group of finance ministers from the 19-country currency union ended in failure last week. The urgency of Greece’s financial situation was underscored on Monday by a report from JPMorgan Chase indicating the Greek banks were losing deposits at the rate of 2 billion euros a week. If that pace continues for the next 14 weeks, the banks will not have enough reserves on hand to issue new loans, according to the report. None of the ministers arriving at the meeting were optimistic about reaching a definitive agreement during the session later on Monday. Some even spoke about the possibility of holding a third meeting on Friday. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, told German radio on Monday that he was “very skeptical” about the chances of a deal later in the day. He also accused the anti-austerity Greek government of behaving “pretty irresponsibly.” Mr. Schäuble said the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, was “insulting those who have helped Greece in the past few years.” Those comments helped prompt a decline in Greece’s benchmark stock index, which fell nearly 4 percent on the day. Three-year Greek government notes fell for the first time in three days. Over the weekend, Greek officials reiterated their determination to revise or scrap the bailout plan that is at the center of the standoff between Greece and its European creditors. A government spokesman on Monday responded to the German finance minister’s remarks. “I could also say that Germany’s behavior is irresponsible, but I don’t want to trade characterizations,” the spokesman, Gavriil Sakellaridis, told a Greek radio station. “Who is irresponsible and who is responsible is subjective.” Athens wants “a solution on the political level,” Mr. Sakellaridis said. “We don’t see this like a game of poker. Neither are we bluffing.” Writing in The New York Times on Monday, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, denied he was following “some radical-left agenda,” and he called for financing that would allow for a “few months of financial stability.” The German news media reported that Mr. Varoufakis was demanding a new agreement with European lenders that would substantially reduce the size of his country’s debt. Mr. Varoufakis and Mr. Dijsselbloem had entered the conference center on Monday without speaking to reporters. But behind the scenes, efforts had been underway to seek a compromise. Technical staff members from Greece and its international creditors met on Friday and Saturday in Brussels to seek common ground between the terms of the current bailout program and the plans of the Greek government. But that exercise apparently yielded few concrete results. “It was an exchange of views, not negotiations,” said Annika Breidthardt, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, the European Union executive body that has helped to oversee the Greek bailout program. The weekend meeting was “merely taking stock” of the situation, she said. There had been speculation among senior eurozone officials on Friday that an interim deal might lead to a new bailout for Greece later this year, which would be the country’s third rescue package since 2010. But reaching that point would almost certainly involve drawn-out wrangling. Michael Noonan, the finance minister of Ireland, suggested that the stalemate between Greece and its European creditors would be greatly eased if Athens quickly agreed to continue taking part in the current international bailout arrangement and waited until “sometime around midsummer” to negotiate a new program. If Greece asked to extend the current arrangement, “some of the roadblocks would fall away, and it would be possible then to get down to specifics,” Mr. Noonan told reporters. “I think the ball is back in the Greek court again now,” he said, but officials in Athens need “to explain to the rest of us what exactly are they looking for.” Mujtaba Rahman, who oversees coverage of Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm, wrote in a briefing note on Monday that a deal might only come closer to the Feb. 28 expiration of the current bailout program because Greece and Germany remained far apart, and both had incentives to let the negotiations play out for some time. “Even if the Greeks were to back down over some red lines, which is possible, the political atmosphere in Europe will need to be more dramatic to justify what is essentially going to be a ‘flip’ by the Greek government,” wrote Mr. Rahman, referring to the pressure Greece faces to make concessions. “Furthermore, Germany’s negotiating position,” Mr. Rahman wrote, “has been extremely tough.” Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
