With Greece facing the possibility of further austerity measures next year and with its looming financing gap making a third bailout – and subsequent consolidation program – appear highly likely, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras travelled to Brussels yesterday to plead for greater solidarity from its lenders.
Speaking at an event held in honor of the late Constantine Karamanlis, Samaras stressed that Greece and its people were making a big effort to live up to its commitments. He expressed his hope the Greece’s creditors would also stand by the country.
The prime minister’s visit came a few hours after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Luxembourg, where European Central Bank executive board member Joerg Asmussen suggested that Greece would need to make further savings or increase its revenues next year to cover a fiscal gap. Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras insisted that Asmussen did not repeat this claim, made to reporters, during the Eurogroup. But according to the Greek daily Kathimerini EU sources have claimed that Greece might have to find an extra 2 billion euros next year on top of about 4 billion it has already planned to save in the draft budget.
The next stumbling block is the financing gap, which Asmussen suggested could be as high as 6 billion euros. The ECB official ruled out the possibility of the bank, or other eurozone central banks, rolling over the Greek bonds they hold to cover the gap.
Source: Kathimerini
