Anxiety about the decision on Monday

The emergency teleconference of Eurozone finance ministers on Greece on Saturday afternoon lasted 2½ hours, while consultations are expected to continue on Monday.

 

According to a European source, the Eurozone finance ministers agreed "to negotiate with the IMF" to reduce the Greek national debt.

 

The same source told AFP that 17 ministers agreed to reduce the interest rates on existing bilateral loans to Greece from the first memorandum, but so far there has been no agreement on the new rate. They also agreed to give the Greek government at least a portion of the profits that ECB and the central banks of the Eurozone members make, while withholding Greek bonds.

 

The common view that “there must be a repurchase of  the Greek debt” is another decision made during the conference. The EFSF will repurchase the Greek debt on the secondary bond market, but without having agreed yet on the range of the repurchase, the same source said, not knowing "if the IMF agrees with the combination of these measures."

 

A Greek government official left the impression that there may be a positive outcome in Monday’s eurogroup by saying "if we were not near a solution, we would have a big problem."

 

The teleconferencing begun around noon on Saturday. Yannis Stournaras and Council of Economic Experts (SOE) president Panos Tsakloglou were in their office early for technical meetings but also “for any eventuality”, as until the last moment Brussels were very secretive about the Eurogroup meeting and were officially saying that it is a Euro Working Group teleconference without the participation of the Eurozone finance ministers.