Davos 2015: Finland opens door to Greece renegotiation

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 22 Ιανουαρίου 2015 - 12:14

The Finnish prime minister opened the door on Thursday to a renegotiation of the terms of Greek debt short of a writedown in the face value owed, ahead of elections on Sunday.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Alexander Stubb said that his country could consider extensions to the maturity of the debt and changes in the conditions attached to the debt, but no debt forgiveness. His Irish counterpart, Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach, agreed.

The moves are significant since Finland has been one of the countries most hostile to any softening of position on debt and reflect a widespread expectation that the leftwing Syriza party will win elections on Sunday.

Insisting that he was not trying to intervene in the Greek election, Mr Stubb laid out the likely negotiating position Finland would take in the event of a Syriza victory .

Mr Stubb said: "The Finnish position is that we will deal with any democratically elected government that Greece has and that it will be very difficult for us to forgive any loans or restructure debt at this particular moment. We can look at different kinds of extensions; we can look at different kinds of programmes and we will deal with it."

Mr Stubb couched his softer tone within heavy rhetoric to reassure the Finnish public that he is not being profligate with their money. "I think there's been a lot of sympathy and a lot of solidarity throughout Europe," he said.

"We've taken extensive measures to try to stabilise the eurozone. Portugal and Ireland have come back to the market [for borrowing], Greece is trying to come back in the market. All of us have taken very difficult structural reforms."

Predicting that any negotiation on the terms of debt maturity extension would be difficult, Mr Stubb added that there were three possible scenarios that were likely to play out.

"One is that things will continue as they are; two is that we'll go into an extensive period of instability, renegotiating something, not renegotiating the debt amounts but something in the structural programmes; and three we have a dirty exit and I think we need to avoid that at all costs."

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