Galery

1

The continuous meetings of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and their reassuring words after them apparently are not convincing for the financial markets. Investor fears are arising from the probability of Greece remaining without funding in the event that the European Central Bank does not allow the issuance of additional bonds amounting to 10 billion euro.

Significantly, today's auction of 6-month government bonds ended with an extremely low demand, the lowest over the past nine years, as the interest rates on them increased to very high levels.

Greece managed to gain from today's auction 813 million euro at a 2.75% interest rate. By comparison, the rate at the previous auction held on 7 January was 2.30%.

At the same time, there was a very low demand for the Greek government debt. The coverage of the bid value reached the lowest level since 2006, which fell to 1.3 while in January it was 1.58.

In statements after his meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker today, the Greek Prime Minister pointed out that the talks were "moving in the right direction." Sources from the European Commission, according to whom Jean-Claude Juncker had carefully listened to Alexis Tsipras’s positions on various issues during the discussion, refused to comment on them.

The next meeting of the Greek Prime Minister was with President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz. It took place less than a week after their first conversation in Athens. In statements to the media, Tsipras pointed out that "there is no agreement (with the European partners of Greece) yet, but we are on the right path to a sustainable solution."

For his part, Martin Schulz said that the "dialogue is the basis for consensus and constructive solutions."

The next stop of the Greek Prime Minister was Paris, where he met with the President of France. During the joint statements after the meeting that lasted two hours, Francois Hollande expressed the solidarity of France with Greece, stating that he will demonstrate it in the coming days and then immediately stressing that the EU member states must observe their commitments to their partners.

Alexis Tsipras replied that Greece is not a threat for Europe but a chance to be exploited. He described the government's proposal for the settlement of the government debt as "realistic", adding that "Europe has no owners and tenants but roommates and all parties have to work intensively for the common European future."

While Alexis Tsipras was in Brussels, the Greek Minister of Finance met with the President of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Only the Greek side made statements in this case too. Yanis Varoufakis said that the conversation between them was constructive, encouraging him for his future actions.

Global media however reported that the European Central Bank does not look favourably on Varoufakis' proposal of "smart debt engineering".

Late in the afternoon, the International Monetary Fund denied the information disseminated by the media that it would negotiate with Greece a possible change of the framework to address the debt issue. "There is an agreed framework for the debt management within the current bailout programme. There has been no discussion with the management regarding the change of this framework," said a representative of the Fund.

At the same time, the international news agency Reuters published a document of the German government that presents the position of Germany on tomorrow's meeting of Euroworking Group. It makes it clear that Berlin will not accept Greece not accomplishing the memorandum of economic aid and calls upon Athens to promise that it will pay its obligations to the euro zone member states, the European Central Bank, the economic assistance fund and the International Monetary Fund.

Less than an hour after the leak the German Ministry of Finance confirmed the authenticity of the document.