Statement by Commissioner Rehn on Greece

As the Commission is responsible for the EU to negotiate the joint EU-IMF programme with Greece, I want to inform you on the present state of the negotiations. I've been in a daily contact with and just spoke again with our mission in Athens, whose team has been working day and night to complete their job.

In the past ten days, the experts of the Commission, the ECB and the IMF have worked extremely effectively and hard with the Greek government to work out a programme that will reverse the debt spiral of Greece and restore its overall economic competitiveness. I am confident that the talks will be concluded in the next days.

The outcome will be a multi-annual programme that will lead to major fiscal and also structural adjustment. Funding to Greece through the coordinated bilateral loans by the euro-area member states will be conditional to implementing the decisions required to meet the conditions of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms.

The financial support will give Greece a sufficient breathing space from the pressures of the financial markets to decisively restore the sustainability of its public finances and to put the economy back on a path of sustainable growth.

I want to underline that this exercise is done not only because of Greece, but for every Euro Area Member State and their citizens to safeguard financial stability in Europe and globally – which is absolutely crucial for our economic recovery, steady growth and employment.