Is Greece’s bailout running out of cash? Part 2

Greek finance minister Stournaras, left, with IMF chief Lagarde at Monday's eurogroup meeting

In an interview with five European newspapers published Thursday, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who heads the committee of eurozone finance ministers, said his eurogroup will need to look at whether Greece needs additional bailout aid in April 2014.

This will surprise some members of the troika, particularly the International Monetary Fund, who were pushing for a reckoning much more quickly amid signs the €172bn second Greek bailout is running out of cash much sooner than anticipated.

Once the €3bn in EU aid contained in a new €4.8bn tranche approved this week is paid out, total EU outlays will reach €133.6bn — out of a total €144.6bn committed (the IMF puts up the rest). So just €11bn left in the EU’s coffers. Further evidence that cash is leaving too quickly is contained in the latest report on Greece’s rescue prepared by the European Commission, which our friends and rivals at Reuters obtained and helpfully posted for everyone to see.

As Brussels Blog noted earlier, there is no more EU cash left in the programme for the second half of next year, even though the bailout was originally supposed to contain enough until the end of 2014. But this chart in the new report makes clear that cash may run out even quicker than that: Not only is the third and fourth quarters of 2014 completely unfunded, now there’s only €1.5bn left for the second quarter, too.