Greek fury at plan for EU budget control

Greece’s finance minister angrily rejected a German plan for the eurozone to impose a budget overseer onto Athens in return for a new €130bn bail-out, saying it would improperly force his country to choose between “financial assistance” and “national dignity”, reports the FT. Evangelos Venizelos said the proposal to create a EU “budget commissioner” with the power to veto Greek tax and spending decisions, published in an earlier FT, “ignores some key historical lessons”. He added EU lenders already had sufficient monitoring safeguards in place in its bail-out programme.  Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schauble reacted with a warning that the eurozone might refuse Greece a fresh bail-out, telling the WSJ that Europe is “prepared to support Greece” with the new loan package, but: “Unless Greece implements the necessary decisions and doesn’t just announce the…there’s no amount of money that can solve the problem.” Angela Merkel faces growing political pressure at home over any call for new taxpayers’ money to bail out Greece, reports the FT separately. Meanwhile Der Spiegel (via Reuters) says the troika of official creditors to Greece believe the bail-out may have to be enlarged from 130bn to 145bn, citing an unnamed representative of the troika. However an EU summit due to start on Monday risks being derailed by the disagreement over Greece, says Bloomberg. Private creditors are now prepared to accept a coupon as low as 3.6 per cent on their bondholdings, it quotes a source as saying.