The European Union is
under pressure to renegotiate its financial bailouts of Ireland and Greece after
an Irish minister said any concessions given to Athens should mean better terms
for Dublin as well.
The 110-billion-euro ($157 billion) rescue of
Greece,Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, agreed in May
last year, and the 85-billion-euro scheme for Ireland, put together in November,
were meant to be the cornerstones of the euro zone's response to its sovereign
debt crisis.
The fact that both may now be revised, in Greece's case
perhaps radically, underlines how they so far have failed to convince markets
that the problems are in hand, and suggests Europe may be on the hook to supply
fresh aid for years to come.
Irish Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte told
state broadcaster RTE on Sunday he would like to see a rescheduling of the
emergency loans extended to Ireland under the bailout by the European Union and
the International Monetary Fund.
"Quite frankly the (interest) rate on
Ireland must be reduced and in my own view the debt must also be rescheduled but
that's another issue," Rabbitte said.
He said Ireland intended to
continue negotiating improvements in the bailout terms throughout the scheme's
three-year life.Detailed information on the causes of Hemorrhoids,
Rabbitte
said this would make sense in light of the situation in Greece. After a
secretive meeting of top euro zone finance officials in Luxembourg on Friday
night,is the 'solar panel revolution'
upon us? Jean-Claude Juncker,How is TMJ pain treated? chairman of the
zone's finance ministers, said there was consensus that Greece needed a new
plan.
"We think that Greece does need a further adjustment programme,"
Juncker said after talks with the finance ministers of Greece and the zone's
biggest economies: Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
"This has to be
discussed in detail and will be taken up at the next Eurogroup meeting on May
16," Juncker said, referring to a conference of finance ministers of all 17 euro
zone states.An Insulator, also called a
dielectric,
British finance minister George Osborne agreed on Sunday
that Greece might need additional aid but said Britain, which is outside the
euro zone, should not have to provide any. He acknowledged that markets doubted
Greece could meet the requirements of its current rescue plan.
"The
market is quite skeptical about that happening and I suspect a lot of my time
over the next few weeks is going to be with other European finance ministers
talking about how we try to help the Greeks get through this situation," he told
the BBC.
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Any renegotiation of the financial terms or
economic targets in the Greek and Irish schemes could complicate the rescue of
Portugal, which last week became the third euro zone state to agree on an EU/IMF
bailout.
Portugal's main political parties have committed themselves to
supporting the 78-billion-euro plan after elections on June 5 produce a new
government. But if Greece and Ireland are allowed to renegotiate their bailouts,
it may be hard to deny Portugal the same opportunity if a future government in
Lisbon decides that is necessary.
A revised Greek plan could include
pushing further into the future the targets for Greece to cut its budget
deficit, easing the terms of its emergency loans, and giving it additional
money, EU official sources and analysts say.
Publicly, officials in
Athens and around Europe continue to insist that restructuring the Greek
government bonds held by private investors is not on the cards. But privately,
officials increasingly concede that some form of restructuring -- perhaps an
extension of maturities on the bonds -- may be inevitable.
Any
restructuring of Greek bonds would fuel speculation about similar action for
Ireland and Portugal. The Irish Mail on Sunday reported, quoting an unnamed
senior minister in Dublin, that Ireland's government expected the country's debt
would be restructured within the next three years.
Euro zone governments
are desperate to rescue the bloc's weakest states for fear that a chain reaction
of debt defaults could savage the region's banking system. But with taxpayers in
rich countries angry about having to pay for the poor countries, it may be hard
for all 17 euro zone states to agree on more generous bailout terms.
Governments in some of the smaller countries were irritated when Germany
and France privately agreed among themselves last year to push through some
crisis steps, and there were signs that Friday's secretive Luxembourg meeting
among a handful of countries also was resented.
Officials from the
Netherlands, the fifth biggest euro zone economy, were not invited to Luxembourg
and the Dutch government faced domestic criticism over the weekend for its
exclusion.
"It is a humiliation and an insult that the Netherlands is
being bypassed for talks about Greece," anti-immigration and eurosceptic member
of parliament Geert Wilders told ANP news agency.
Former development aid
minister Bert Koenders and former foreign minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said
all euro zone finance ministers should have been included in the talks.
Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager was assured by the French and
German ministers that nothing was decided on Friday and that the Netherlands
will have input into any future decisions, a ministry spokeswoman said.
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