Euro-area finance ministers will push the International Monetary Fund and central bankers to endorse new plans to save Greece from the fiscal abyss, seeking to overcome the latest impasse in the debt crisis and restart aid payments to Athens.
Finance chiefs will brief the IMF and European Central Bank on "further concessions" that would plug Greece's deficit gap without forcing a writeoff of official loans, Austria's Maria Fekter said today before the ministers' fourth round of talks on the Greek crisis in two weeks.
IMF criticism of Europe's failure to put Greece's debt on a "sustainable" path has held up an accord on an updated financing package, narrowing the options for patching up the debt-stricken country drawing on 240 billion euros ($311 billion) in official loans awarded since 2010. French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said, "Consensus is within reach if we are capable of seizing it. If everyone is reasonable, we can do it quite quickly."
A deal is "practically finalised, there are just a few centimeters to go," French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said. "Consensus is within reach if we are capable of seizing it. If everyone is reasonable, we can do it quite quickly."
IMF criticism of Europe's failure to put Greece's debt on a "sustainable" path has held up an accord on an updated financing package, narrowing the options for patching up the debt-stricken country drawing on 240 billion euros (US$311 billion) in official loans pledged since 2010.
A solution is hung up on politics in Germany, the dominant country in Europe's crisis management, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is campaigning for a third term next year on the pledge that Greece won't cost taxpayers an additional cent.
On the way in to today's meeting, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble dismissed warnings by the IMF and some ECB officials that forgiveness of part of the official debt is the only way out for Greece.
Bloomberg