Brussels, July 14 (CTK) – The Czech Republic does not want the EFSM fund to be used for a bridging loan given to Greece, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told Czech journalists in the European Parliament yesterday.
Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis, who took part in a meeting of European finance ministers, said Greece is an issue that only euro zone countries must deal with.
All member countries of the European Union contribute to the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). The Czech participation in the EFSM is 1.13 percent. The Czech Republic is not a member of the euro zone.
Sobotka said Prague considered the EFSM a dead instrument.
“The European Council agreed that after 2013 it shouldn’t be used anymore,” he said.
On Monday, the euro zone member countries decided that Greece can start negotiating about further financial aid from the European Stabilisation Mechanism (ESM), which is the euro zone’s rescue fund, provided that it launches radical economic reforms.
But the highly indebted Greece needs the money almost immediately and the negotiations about the aid from the ESM will take some time. As a result, the euro zone has been seeking ways to bridge this time. Apart from possible direct bilateral loans, diplomatic sources talked about the EFSM, from which Ireland and Portugal received aid in the past.
For the euro zone countries, the ESM replaced the EFSM, yet there is still some money available in the EFSM.
Babis said the countries outside the euro zone do not want the solution to the Greek crisis to involve the EU budget.
Apart from the Czech Republic, this position was presented by Britain, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden and other EU countries, Babis said.
He said all countries that do not use the single currency seemed to share this view.
Nobody has proposed the idea of using the EFSM for a bridging loan at the meeting of finance ministers.
Babis repeatedly said he considers the deal agreed on between Greece and other euro zone countries on Monday unfortunate.
Babis believes Greece should leave the euro zone because otherwise the present critical situation would occur in a few years again. According to him, Grexit and a partial debt relief would be the best solution.
