While weighing the need to protect the currency against the official position that prohibits the EU from providing direct financial aid to individual member-countries, European finance ministers have opted to provide a safety net to Greece. The rescue will come in the form of emergency loans that will only be implemented if the combined €4.8 billion (US$6.6 billion) in tax increases and spending cuts Greece has already planned, fails to avoid the country’s collapse.
“We clarified the technical arrangements that would enable us to take coordinated action which could be swiftly put into place in the event it is necessary,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters late yesterday after leading a meeting of euro-area finance officials in Brussels.
Source: Bloomberg