MADRID--Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, has said he is more determined than ever to avoid having to ask for a bailout – despite the insistence last week by ECB president, Mario Draghi, that it would be a condition of the central bank helping to keep down a country's borrowing costs.
"If there is one overriding priority for creating employment it's reducing the public deficit. That is far more important than what people like to call a bailout," Rajoy said in a televised interview on Monday night. Draghi announced last week that the bank would buy unlimited quantities of sovereign debt to ensure eurozone governments retained access to funding, but he made it clear that there would be strings attached. However, Rajoy said he was not prepared to accept such conditions. "I couldn't accept anyone else telling us what our policies should be or where we have to make cuts," he said. How this apparent intransigence is received in Brussels and Berlin remains to be seen, but Rajoy received some support for his stance on Tuesday during a visit to Madrid by the Finnish prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, who said a bailout could be avoided as long as the measures taken in Madrid were seen as credible. Rajoy is at pains to show that he is in charge, that he is not the victim of circumstance and that he is making decisions of his own free will and not because they have been imposed on him. He appears to have decided that, if he has to make spending cuts and other unpopular decisions, then he will do it without ceding sovereignty the way the Greeks have been forced to do.
1 comment:
NICOSIA, Cyprus—Euro-zone finance ministers indicated Friday they are open to giving Athens more time to meet budget targets and that they aim to decide by the end of October on whether to give Greece its next installment of a bailout money….In their first gathering after a long summer hiatus, finance ministers from the 17-member currency bloc spent the morning discussing the economic and financial crises of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus. They were joined later by the 10 ministers from the rest of the European Union to debate proposals, released this week, for a system of common banking supervision. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, center, with IMF chief Christine Lagarde, left, Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble talk at the start of a two-day informal meeting in Cyprus….The meeting comes days after the European Central Bank announced a revamped plan for purchases of government bonds in the open market in coordination with the euro zone's rescue funds, and follows a German constitutional court ruling clearing the way for the launch of the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent bailout fund. Friday's gathering turned attention back to the governments of bailed-out countries and what they will do to implement tough reforms to qualify for support from the currency bloc. Ministers sought to keep pressure on the Athens government, which hopes to win approval soon for the next disbursement in its €173 billion ($224.7 billion) second bailout package…. The Greeks "need to show very strongly decisive action" on structural reforms and spending cuts, said Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers. Athens must agree to a "set of credible measures to close the fiscal gap between 2013 and 2014," he said.
Post a Comment