BERLIN (MNI) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right
CDU/CSU bloc has stepped up pressure on Spain to apply for financial aid
from the European bailout fund EFSF in order to prop up its ailing
banks.
“Each day that Madrid waits longer makes this thing more expensive
for all of us,” Michael Meister, the deputy leader of the CDU/CSU
parliamentary group, told the German daily Rheinische Post in an
interview published Thursday.
“If Spain does not make a request for aid quickly, it will only
have to be much bigger in a couple of weeks,” Meister warned.
On Wednesday, Volker Kauder, the CDU/CSU’s parliamentary leader,
called on Spain to apply for financial aid: “I do think that Spain needs
to tap the rescue fund – not because of its state [finances] but because
of its banks.”
The government on Wednesday said the European bailout funds were
ready to support Spain if the country applies for aid and accepts the
conditions tied to it.
Germany again reaffirmed its stance that the European temporary
rescue fund EFSF and the planned permanent ESM can lend only to states
and not directly to banks.
“The principles are clear, the request must come from a
government,” spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular press
conference here. “This government will then be liable and accepts the
conditions tied to getting the aid.”
These conditions could be “specific for the concerned banks, which
get aid, or possibly for the whole financial sector of the country that
gets aid,” he explained.
Seibert said if the Spanish government decides to request aid “then
the European instruments are ready under the described terms.”
The German weekly Der Spiegel reported over the weekend that Merkel
and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had also urged Spain to apply
for financial aid from the EFSF, yet the Spanish government had resisted
this demand.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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