By Gabriele Steinhauser
RIGA, Latvia--Some eurozone finance ministers on Saturday
acknowledged for the first time that they are considering plans on
what to do if no deal on Greece's future financing can be reached
by the end of June.
The statements by the finance ministers of Slovenia and Germany
break a long-held taboo during eurozone crisis talks, where policy
makers have been insisting that they are entirely focused on
keeping Greece in the currency union with the help of more bailout
loans. Yet, with the country's existing EUR240 billion ($261
billion) bailout deal expiring at the end of June, and technical
discussions on future support all but stuck despite big debt
repayments looming in July and August, some politicians are
starting to look at alternative scenarios.
Slovenia's finance minister confirmed that he raised the issue
of a "Plan B" during Friday's meeting with his eurozone
counterparts, also known as the Eurogroup.
"What my discussion was about is what we will do if...the new
program will not be achieved in time for Greece to be able to
finance itself and improve liquidity," Dusan Mramor said Saturday
morning.
He denied, however, that the result of no new bailout deal would
be an automatic exit of Greece from the eurozone. "A 'Plan B' can
be anything, " Mr. Mramor said. Mr. Mramor's suggestion was
supported at Friday's talks by the finance chiefs of Slovakia and
Lithuania, according to a senior eurozone official.
Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was more oblique
in his response to the question of whether his country had a 'Plan
B'.
"Of course there's sufficient fantasy to imagine what kinds of
things could happen" if no deal on Greece's bailout can be reached,
Mr. Schäuble said Saturday. "But if a responsible member of the
Eurogroup, or any responsible politician, were to answer this
question with 'yes,' we know what would happen. If he answered it
with 'no,' which I have done here by not even accepting the
question, then we know that you won't believe me."
Mr. Schäuble also likened the preparations for a potential Greek
default or euro exit to the reunification of Germany--a process
that commenced with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"If I had said in advance that we had a plan for reunification,
everyone would have said the Germans have gone completely mad," Mr.
Schäuble said.
The former German Democratic Republic adopted the German Mark,
Germany's currency before the introduction of the euro, in
1990.
Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at
gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com