BRATISLAVA, October 21, (WEBNOVINY) — Prime Minister Iveta Radicova (SDKU-DS) informed at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee for European Affairs that Slovakia supports a 50-percent write-down of the Greek debt. “Most countries favor this radical solution, including Slovakia,“ she said. She elaborated that there were two different views of the extension of the bailout fund and a controlled default of Greece – one with involvement of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the rescue mechanism and the other does not count on bank’s involvement but on the guarantee of 20 percent of debts of debt-stricken countries. She emphasized that no further extension of guarantees in the rescue EFSF mechanism would be granted.
The Prime Minister considers discussion on recapitalization of European banks to be a more serious problem. Most countries promote seeking internal sources of threatened banks and only after that fails national governments would be given the floor. The bailout fund would be the last resort. France, however, is sponsoring preventive use of eurozone‘s rescue mechanism in this case. “This option does not have many supporters among eurozone members, it is just a blank check which is rather risky and not very responsible,“ she assessed.
The Prime Minister expects discussion on the approval of a permanent bailout mechanism to be the least problematic topic. She does not consider the date, which was originally supposed to be year 2013, but the way the sources will be transferred from the temporary to the permanent bailout fund by extending the permanent fund or debt write-down to be the chief problem.
SITA