The decision came a day after Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, acknowledged Athens would miss the 2011 benchmarks, which the European Union and the International Monetary Fund had set as a prerequisite for disbursing an essential €8 billion bail-out payment that is already past due.
By combining 2011 with 2012 targets instead, the EU appeared to be preparing to fudge this year’s missed benchmarks, paving the way for the closely watched aid payment, which Athens says it needs in a matter of days or it will run out of cash. But senior eurozone officials warned they were likely to extract new concessions for 2013 and 2014 in the coming days before signing off on the new money.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who heads the group of eurozone finance ministers, insisted that while the new measures would probably delay the payment until November, officials remained steadfast in preventing a Greek default.
“We had no one advocating a default of Greece”, Mr Juncker said. “Everything will be done to avoid that, and it will avoided.” At the same time, Mr Juncker signalled the new €109 billion bail-out for Greece – agreed just two months ago – was likely to be reopened, particularly the complicated plan to get Greek bondholders to shoulder some of the burden by taking an estimated 21 per cent “haircut” on their debt repayments. Any new plan is likely to require deeper cuts for private bondholders, though Mr Juncker declined to say what changes would occur. “We have to take into account we have experienced changes since the decision we had taken on July 21”, he said. “These are technical revisions we're are discussing.”
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