Luc Frieden: It must be very clear for the Greek people, and for the Greek political parties, that whoever forms this new government in the next few days or weeks, that it’s not a unilateral financial assistance. It is a financial assistance which Greece needs, linked with conditions to put them back on a path which in the future will allow them to be again a fully sovereign country.
Nina Dos Santos: The markets are still pricing in a 75% chance of the Greek Euro-exit, if you take for instance reports published by City Group in the last week or so. That must be something that ministers like you have to consider the ramifications of. Are you planning for it? Just in case?
Luc Frieden: We are not right now planning or discussing an exit of Greece. That would not be fair vis-à-vis Greece.
Elections are something normal in democracy. I do realize that these circumstances are extremely difficult for Greece, but I think we must clearly convey to the Greek people, through their political parties and directly, that for them leaving the Eurozone also has a very high price.
For us, the priority is to keep them in the Eurozone, not at any price, but at the conditions that have already been agreed upon.
Nina Dos Santos: We have got a key meeting going on on Tuesday between François Hollande, the president-elect of France, and Angela Merkel of Germany. Being from Luxembourg, you are in a unique position. You are almost, geographically speaking, between a rock and a hard place, metaphorically speaking as well. Do you think that this will be the first time that we may see a softening by Angela Merkel, vis-à-vis austerity?
Luc Frieden: Well, we indeed understand very well the positions of France and of Germany, being located between the two countries.
And I don’t think that you can say, on the one hand there is austerity measures, and on the other hand there are growth measures. I do think that the two go hand in hand, and that is something which is often forgotten.
Nina Dos Santos: France has not said that it’s going to plan on keeping the deficit. In fact, François Hollande has said that he wants eradicate the deficit by 2017. So, he’s already said that. What he has said though is that he wants to open up this new fiscal pact to include growth. What are the realistic chances of that actually happening?
Luc Frieden: With all due respect to my excellent French friends, I must say that it is unrealistic to renegotiate the fiscal pact. This is in fact on the one hand common sense, what is the content of that fiscal pact. And on the other hand, it is the result of very long negotiations.