A deputy German Finance Minister dismissed a magazine report saying Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had told conservative members of parliament on Friday to prepare for a looming Greek bankruptcy and euro zone exit.
“This report is nonsense,” Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter told Reuters on Saturday on the sidelines of a regional meeting of Christian Democrats in the western town of Krefeld.
Kampeter said that Schaeuble had spoken to the conservative MPs on Friday about the need for the austerity and reform measures in Greece to be implemented.
German newsweekly Focus reported that Schaeuble had told MPs in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the sister party, Christian Social Union (CSU), to get ready for Greece leaving the euro zone and a Greek state bankruptcy.
The magazine said in an advance of a report in its Monday edition that Schaeuble was talking to the MPs about the further development of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the euro zone’s permanent bailout fund. He said that an aspect that would be necessary was to have a set-up for state bankruptcies.
Focus said that participants of the meeting heard Schaeuble say that in the view of many experts Greece would not make it “without an external devaluation.”
(source: Reuters, Matthias Inverardi, Erik Kirschbaum)
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