UK will not be footing Greek bail-out bill, insists Chancellor
NO UK cash will be used to help prop up the eurozone bail-out of Greece, Downing Street has insisted.
Chancellor Geor ge Osborne made clear before a meeting of European Union finance ministers (Ecofin) in Brussels that any suggestion the taxpayer would put hundreds of millions of pounds on the line for the deal was a “complete non-starter.”
He told the single currency union it must “foot its own bill”.
Mr Osborne held a series of telephone conversations with other finance ministers ahead of the meeting in an attempt to fend off any move to use the EU-wide European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) emergency fund to rescue the Greek economy from collapse. And Downing Street said that in the event, the proposal was not even tabled for ministers to discuss at the meeting.
Speaking as he arrived in Brussels, Mr Osborne said: “It’s in the interests of economic stability across Europe that this Greek deal is now signed and sealed. But let me be very clear. Britain is not in the euro, so the idea that British taxpayers are going to be on the line for this Greek deal is a complete non-starter. The eurozone needs to foot its own bill.”
Prime Minister David Cameron declared in 2010 that he had won a “clear and unanimous agreement” that the EFSM would no longer be used to underwrite bail-outs of str uggling eurozone countries.
Instead, responsibility was supposed to fall only on member states using the single currency under a new permanent mechanism specifically set up to deal with crises like that in Greece.