During an interview in Dutch radio BNR, Jeroen Dijsselbloem said he expects the Greek government and the international institutions to come up with an agreement within the next two weeks.
“We still have to agree on a number of additional measures, a kind of guarantees we asked of them. Legally this seems to be still quite complicated. We can use this extra time to explore the possibilities of further debt relief” Eurogroup chief commented, however ruling out debt cancellation. Other tools of debt relief could be the extension on repayment terms or a re-examination of interest rates.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem argued that introducing an automatic mechanism which will either increase taxes or cut public spending, depending on the situation, will contribute in dealing with possible budget shortfalls.
Asked about whether the Greek parliament could adopt such contingency measures, Dijsselbloem said yesterday: “Many countries have this kind of contingency measures in their budget. Whether they are fiscal breaks or automatic tax measures if the budget gets off track”.
Euro zone finance ministers had penciled in a tentative meeting on Greece for April 28, but canceled it after progress in talks with Athens proved insufficient.