BRATISLAVA, June 29, (WEBNOVINY) — Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos is not opposed to a parliamentary debate about his mandate to negotiate terms for the second Greek bailout slated for Friday and has promised to table his own outline of conditions for the loan. “I do not have a problem with a debate in parliament, but one of the five points is problematic since if it is approved in its present wording, it will practically mean Greece’s default,” he announced following the Cabinet session on Wednesday.
Miklos already sent his concept of the position over the Greek bailout to Parliament Speaker Richard Sulik (SaS) on Tuesday evening. In addition to the five already formulated conditions, his paper also includes a sixth point, namely an analysis of sustainability of the Greek debt and Greece’s potential return to borrowing on financial markets. Miklos wants to alter the formulation regarding the participation of the private sector in the bailout, requested by SaS party. The minister opines that the material should spell out a minimum volume of 30 billion euros. “I propose that the parliament changes that one point or adds even the sixth one,” he commented on his plan. Lawmakers are slated to talk about Miklos’ mandate for talks about the Greek bailout on Friday morning.
The liberal party SaS won some SNS deputies for a parliamentary debate about the mandate for the finance minister. KDH leader Jan Figel has remarked that this move of the coalition partner is close to an infringement of the coalition accord achieved at the previous talks. “It nears a breach at least of the coalition concord we had striven to define whereby SaS had been present [during the talks],” he said when asked whether SaS was in violation of the coalition treaty.
Chairman of the strongest ruling coalition party SDKU-DS Mikulas Dzurinda discussed the matter with Sulik on Monday, as well. Dzurinda, the Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister, noted that he was not much interested to assess whether SaS’ initiative infringed the coalition treaty but highlighted the importance of the outcome. The minister is convinced that deputies still have enough time to debate and harmonize the wording of conditions Slovakia will try to push through.
Sulik’s party wants to confine the mandate of the finance minister in Brussels’ talks about the Greek bailout and demands the participation of the private sector in the restructuring of the Greek debt in a way that would practically mean the country’s default.
SITA