At a press conference today finance minister Ivan Miklos said he had no problem at all with parliament setting out his mandate to negotiate the new bailout loan for Greece, while rejecting claims that he had threatened to resign if this happened.
Miklos explained that the only problem he had with the demands of his coalition partners from the SaS party was the one that conditioned the loan to the participation of private creditors in assuming part of the debt, as this would automatically mean Greece would go bankrupt.
Miklos thinks that if Greece were to go bankrupt this would have an impact also on Slovakia, whether directly or indirectly. He pointed out that he and everyone in the coalition, including the SaS party, had agreed with the five key conditions that Slovakia wants Greece to meet.
The conditions include the participation of the private sector and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the new programme, the privatisation of state property, collateral backing for the new loan with tangible property and the option of an additional sixth condition, namely an analysis of whether Greece can repay the loan to be drawn up by experts of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission.
Eurozone finance ministers will converge on Brussels at the weekend to evaluate whether Greece has met the conditions to be able to receive the next tranche of the loan, and they will be discussing the shape and terms of the new loan. If everything is in order, Miklos says the loan should be approved a week later, around 10 July.