Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Fiscal hawks warn against Greek debt write-off

  • Lagarde and Schaeuble: Debt forgiveness doesn't have many supporters in northern Europe (Photo: Council of European Union)

Germany, Finland and the International Monetary Fund have warned against the idea of an international conference to write off some of Greece's debt.

Greece’s left-wing party Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras, who might become prime minister after the Sunday (25 January) elections, have called for a debt conference to write off some of Greece's debt, similar to the 1953 London Conference that wrote off half of Germany’s post-war debt.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Greece’s public debt has reached €320 billion, or 174 percent of its gross domestic product, but Athens currently has relatively small debt repayments, as the deadline for paying back the loans has already been pushed back beyond 2050.

The idea has been met positively in Ireland and France. The Irish finance minister last week came the first eurozone politician to speak in favour of a conference that would also look at Ireland, Portugal and Spain's debt.

Speaking to the Financial Times on Sunday, French finance minister Michel Sapin said eurozone countries should respect the outcome of the Greek elections and be ready to negotiate with the new Greek leadership on restructuring the country's large debt burden.

“Whatever the result of the election will be, it is absolutely fair and legitimate that discussions should take place between the EU and the new Greek government,” Sapin said.

But the idea has gained no traction among fiscal hawks, who so far have called the shots on Greece's two consecutive bailouts and the austerity measures attached.

Speaking to the Irish Times on Sunday (18 January), IMF chief Christine Lagarde said that "as a principle, collective endeavours are welcome but at the same time a debt is a debt and it is a contract.”

“Defaulting, restructuring, changing the terms has consequences on the signature [of a country] and the confidence in the signature," she added.

Her comments were echoed by Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb in an interview published Monday in the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini.

"No, a debt writedown is not something that would be in the interest of the eurozone and it would not be acceptable to Finland. It would not be in line with basic EU rules," Stubb said.

Finland in 2012 was the only EU country to demand extra financial guarantees in order to approve the second Greek bailout, to mitigate the risk that Athens would not pay back the loans in full.

EU commission vice-president in charge of the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, also told Reuters that "we are not considering debt write-offs".

Equally critical of the debt write-off idea is German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble who over the weekend told Der Spiegel magazine that this "question does not arise" and that the next Greek government must honour its commitments.

"Politicians in Greece must take care that they don't promise more before the election than they can keep afterwards," Schaeuble warned.

In poll published Sunday gave Syriza a 3.1 percent lead over the ruling centre-right New Democracy party, up from 2.5 percent the previous week.

New Democracy leader and prime minister Antonis Samaras meanwhile has received support from his Spanish counterpart, Mariano Rajoy, who came to Athens over the weekend to speak in favour of the policies. implemented by Samaras.

“I am here to support a set of policies that have been hard, difficult, and complicated,” Rajoy said at a joint press conference with Samaras in Athens today. “Those policies were necessary, indispensable, and have borne fruit. More importantly, they lay a solid foundation for the future.”

Samaras, for his part, also warned that "it is not possible for negotiations on all the issues to start again right from the beginning, and all Europe’s rules to change, each time a new government is elected”.

He said his government is negotiating a soft transition out of the last three-year bailout, which would ease some of the austerity measures.

Eurozone in suspense as Greeks head to polls

Greeks head to the polls on Sunday in what could see the far-left Syriza party re-write the rules of the country's bailout and start a new trend in European politics.

'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told

Italian central banker Piero Cipollone in his first monetary policy speech since joining the ECB's board in November, said that the bank should be ready to "swiftly dial back our restrictive monetary policy stance."

Opinion

EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania

Among the largest sources of financing for energy transition of central and eastern European countries, the €60bn Modernisation Fund remains far from the public eye. And perhaps that's one reason it is often used for financing fossil gas projects.

Latest News

  1. German bank freezes account of Jewish peace group
  2. EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania
  3. 'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told
  4. Moscow's terror attack, security and Gaza
  5. Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult
  6. EU unveils plan to create a European cross-border degree
  7. How migrants risk becoming drug addicts along Balkan route
  8. 2024: A Space Odyssey — why the galaxy needs regulating

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us