BERLIN (MNI) – The German Finance Ministry on Wednesday denied a
media report that Germany is urging Spain to call for a full bailout.
“The report that Spain is being pushed by the [German] government
under the rescue umbrella is absurd,” ministry spokesman Johannes
Blankenheim said at a regular press conference here. A full bailout is
not being discussed, he stressed.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his Spanish
counterpart Luis de Guindos met on Tuesday evening in Berlin. In a joint
statement released after the meeting, the two ministers said that “the
program to strengthen the Spanish banking sector is an important element
to overcome the confidence crisis in Spain and the Eurozone as a whole.”
Schaeuble and de Guindos argued that “the current level of interest
rates prevailing in the sovereign debt market does not correspond to the
fundamentals of the Spanish economy, its growth potential and the
sustainability of its public debt.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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