EU frustration over Greece hits boiling point at eurogroup meeting
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What the Next Two Weeks Holds in Store in the Greek Crisis Saga
People sit at the foot of Acropolis Hill in Athens, Greece. Photographer: Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg A euro area finance ministers meeting over the disbursement of bailout funds ended in acrimony on Friday, as creditors expressed frustration with the country’s refusal to comply with the terms attached to its emergency loans. While focus now turns on a May 6 interest repayment to the International Monetary Fund and the next Eurogroup meeting on May 11 in Brussels, the country has a number of funding hurdles to clear before then and beyond. From Monday through to the end of the month, the government needs to pay pensions and salaries to civil servants and retirees. The country’s alternate finance minister, Dimitris Mardas said Wednesday there’s not enough cash in state coffers to meet these obligations, unless local authorities comply with a decree ordering them to transfer reserves to the Bank of Greece for short-term […]
Gazprom CEO Offers Greece a Gas Pipeline but Little Else
The chief executive of Russian state-owned OAO Gazprom pushed a plan Tuesday to sell its natural gas to the European Union via Greece, but made no public offers of immediate sweeteners during a visit to cash-strapped Athens. OAO Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said in a statement that the company could guarantee annual shipments of 47 billion cubic meters of gas via Greece. He said Greece could raise commercial loans against the guaranteed deliveries. Greece, which is in difficult talks with European leaders over much-needed financing, is hoping for an economic boost from Russia, such as cheaper natural gas supplies or an exemption from Moscow’s ban on European food imports. But there have been no major agreements despite a two-day trip by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Moscow earlier this month, where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin and criticized the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia over the Ukrainian […]
Euro up but on edge before crunch meeting on Greece
LONDON (Reuters) – The euro edged up on Monday ahead of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers that investors hope will find common ground to support Greece beyond its current bailout program and keep it inside the currency bloc. The single currency has gained steadily through a nervous month of deadlock between the new government in Athens and its international creditors in Europe and at the IMF. That, and the relative calm on debt markets in Spain, Italy and Portugal, suggests euro zone leaders might be risking less in letting Greece leave the euro now than they would have done during a previous standoff in 2012. But at least for now, analysts seem more inclined to attribute the lack of a significant sell-off to confidence that ministers will find a way to satisfy the complicated political agendas on both sides. "This can quickly turn sour for the euro […]
A Flawed Plan B for Greece
ENLARGE Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addresses a news conference after a European Union leaders summit in Brussels on Thursday. Photo: Reuters It is a mark of the gulf that still separates Greece and the rest of the eurozone that an agreement last week simply to engage in “technical discussions” was hailed as a step forward in the search for a solution to the country’s debt crisis. It was certainly a climb-down by the new Greek government, which had previously ruled out any negotiations with its “troika” of international lenders. And it followed previous climb-downs: Athens is now asking for debt restructuring rather than write-downs, and it now says it will abide by 70% of the reforms required under its current bailout program. But talking signifies nothing. Even this latest step was only possible on the basis of a fudge after an initial attempt by eurozone finance ministers to […]
Greece, euro zone fail to agree on debt, to try again on Monday
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Greece’s new leftist government and its international creditors failed to agree on a way forward on the country’s unpopular bailout and will try again on Monday, with time running out for a financing deal. In seven hours of crisis talks in Brussels that ended after midnight, euro zone finance ministers were unable to agree even a joint statement on the next procedural steps. Both sides played down the setback, insisting there had been no rupture. But Greek stock prices, which whipped higher after hours in New York on talk of an accord, sagged with disappointment when it emerged that Greece’s laconic new Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis had walked away from a draft deal to extend current credit terms after conferring with fellow Greek officials. "We had an intense discussion, constructive, covering a lot of ground, also making progress, but not enough progress yet to come to […]
Greek Factories Slump as Crisis Risks Undermining ECB Action
(Bloomberg) — Greek manufacturing shrank at the fastest pace since 2013 as uncertainty about the country’s political future mounted, threatening to undermine efforts by the European Central Bank to stimulate the euro-area economy. A Purchasing Managers’ Index for Greece slipped to a 15-month low of 48.3. The measure has been below 50, the mark that separates expansion from contraction, since September. A final reading for the 19-nation currency bloc stood at 51 in January, London-based Markit Economics said on Monday. That’s up from 50.6 in December and in line with a Jan. 23 estimate. Subdued growth and a slide in prices aggravated by a slump in the cost of oil prompted the ECB to announce a 1.1 trillion euro ($1.2 trillion) quantitative-easing program on Jan. 22. Business confidence improved last month in anticipation of the move. Three days after the QE announcement, Greek voters elected Alexis Tsipras as new […]
Greece encouraged by Ionian Sea hydrocarbon survey
ATHENS, Greece, Nov. 8 (UPI) — Greece this week hailed the preliminary results of an oil and gas survey in the Ionian Sea showing similarities to earlier finds in Italian and Albanian waters. Greek Energy Minister Yiannis Maniatis, speaking Wednesday at a petroleum industry conference in Athens, said the first conclusions of a seismic survey carried out in the Ionian and south of Crete by the Norwegian company Petroleum Geo-Services were promising. Maniatis said the initial findings revealed geological analogies between the underwater area of the North Ionian and Italian and Albanian regions of the sea where oil and natural gas have already been found, the Greek daily To Vima reported. In the findings, PGS reported “a diversity of geological characteristics of the Greek subsoil and a corresponding number of potential petroleum resources” — potentially good news for the cash-strapped country, which is seeking to improve its financial situation […]