25/02/2015
(το κείμενο υπάρχει μόνο στα Αγγλικά)
Mr President, I also do not understand why Mr Draghi is not here to answer, but allow me to pretend that he is here, or else that he will try to answer these questions soon.
There was, during the Eurogroup negotiations on Greece, a bank run, which endangered the stability of the Greek banking system. Of course, the support of the ECB was of great importance; however, the outcome of the negotiations left us with a big question about the financing of the short-term liquidity needs that Greece faces for March until April. Nobody has an answer to that, so a possible response to these needs is the use of ELA funds so that the Greek banks can buy Greek government T-bills. But there was a strong ‘no’ from the ECB during the negotiations on Friday, so I was wondering if the ECB was willing to reconsider in the event of extreme severe liquidity problems in March, on the legitimate basis of the independence of the ECB, without any other political affirmation.
Secondly, during the negotiations the opinion was expressed that the ELA provided to Greek banks should be brought down from EUR 65 billion to EUR 42 billion. It was a proposal of Mr Sinn of the IFO: I wonder if you share their views? And lastly, a return of EUR 1.9 billion was requested to be withheld from the ECB from the Greek sovereign bonds that were at our disposal. What is the position on that, and what happens with the liquidity today? Has the bank sector recovered from last week’s shock?
