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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Merkel “Won’t Be Blackmailed By Greece”, Demands Deal Before Market Open On Monday

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

The Eurogroup meeting between EU finance ministers has broken up for the day and will reconvene on Saturday according to reports.

As noted earlier, Greece is now refusing to agree to the IMF’s hardline stance on pension cuts and the VAT, while the IMF isn’t interested in a deal that sees Athens escaping long-term fiscal reform by resorting to short-term, unenforceable solutions such as tax hikes. 

As EU leaders convene for a two-day summit in Brussels (where it will be all Greece, all day, despite what anyone says), German Chancellor Angela Merkel now looks to be leaning towards drawing a line in the sand consistent with her finance minister, her lawmakers, and her central bank chief. 

  • GERMANY’S MERKEL TOLD EU PARTY LEADERS THERE MUST BE DEAL ON GREECE BEFORE MARKETS OPEN ON MONDAY -PARTICIPANTS   
  • MERKEL ALSO TOLD CONSERVATIVE EPP LEADERS “WE WON’T BE BLACKMAILED” BY GREECE -PARTICIPANTS   

This marks a critical turn of events. Until now, Merkel had been relucant to fold under pressure from Wolfgang Schaeuble as the Chancellor viewed the geopolitical risks of Grexit as too great given the situation in Ukraine and recent friction between Europe and Russia including the extension of economic sanctions, an anti-trust suit against Gazprom, and the seizure of Russian state assets in France, Belgium, and Austria. 

Now, it appears Merkel’s patience has run out, and understandably so given not only the fact that sending a strong message to Greece is critical if Berlin hopes to avoid being drug into similar negotiations with Spain, Portugal, and/or Italy in the future, but also because, as we’ve explained at length, each ELA cap hike from the ECB effectively adds another billion euros or more to Germany’s TARGET2 credit. 

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