ECB’s Coeure Asks How, Not If Greek Debt Restructure

The euro zone no longer questions whether to restructure Greece’s debt but rather how best to go about it, ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said in a newspaper interview published Monday.

Coeure told French daily Le Monde that all euro zone countries wanted Greece to remain in the shared currency bloc and were prepared to offer “unprecedented financial solidarity” as long as Greece carried out reforms.

“In truth, the question is not whether to restructure Greece’s debt but rather how to do it so that it would be really useful for the country’s economy,” he said.

“That’s why it’s important to make this restructuring, whatever form it takes, conditional on the application of measures that reinforce the economy and ensure the sustainability of Greek public finances,” he added.

Coeure defended the European Central Bank in the face of criticism about its handling of Greece, saying that the ECB had always stuck to its mandate during the crisis.

With five months of negotiations causing huge economic and financial costs for Greece, he said the crisis had exposed how deeply flawed the euro zone’s decision-making was and urged more integration in order to take tough decisions effectively.

“The genie of euro zone exit has escaped in the Greek crisis and won’t easily get back in the bottle,” he said.

via Reuters

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza