Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email
[email protected] to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article -
Eurocrats scratch heads over ‘haircuts’ - FT.com
Eurocrats scratch heads over ‘haircuts’
By Peter Spiegel in Brussels
Published: September 8 2011 19:17 | Last updated: September 8 2011 19:17
When eurozone leaders announced in July they were proceeding with a controversial plan to get Greek bondholders to help pay for a new €109bn bail-out for Athens, they vowed it was an “exceptional and unique” situation that would never be repeated. But how long is never?
Two weeks before the Greek deal was reached, finance ministers from the same 17 eurozone countries signed a treaty establishing a new, permanent €500bn ($695bn) bail-out fund, called the European stability mechanism.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Trichet hits out at ECB’s critics - Sep-08
Gloomy Trichet paves way for rate cut - Sep-08
Draghi’s first ECB test will be Italy crises - Sep-08
Insight: Berlin sees ‘treaty change’ consensus - Sep-08
Lex: Central banks - Sep-08
Money Supply: Live blog - ECB press conference - Sep-08
But the ESM makes allowance for similar bondholder “haircuts” when it comes into force mid-2013.
Several senior European officials believe that the Greek promise takes precedence, meaning the treaty’s language – which was fought for tooth and nail by the German government – will have to be revised. Among those who back that assessment, according to the officials, are the European Central Bank and the European Commission.
“My reading of the situation is that all the leaders are not fully aware of all the implications the [Greek agreement] has to the ESM treaty,” said one senior European official involved in the Greek discussions. “The wording implies we should change the treaty language.”
Unlike many European Union legal niceties which occasionally grip Brussels but have little import outside eurocrat debating salons, a change in the ESM language could have widespread implications for national governments’ balance sheets and eurozone sovereign bond markets.
The agreement that gave the ESM the ability to force bondholders into haircuts – reached between Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, and Angela Merkel, German chancellor, last October at the French seaside resort of Deauville – remains one of the most hotly disputed events of the eurozone debt crisis.
The Deauville deal took other leaders and the financial markets by surprise and led to a panicked sell-off of bonds in peripheral EU countries, forcing Ireland into a bail-out as its borrowing costs on the financial markets became unsustainable.
It was the first sign the EU had finally conceded to long-held demands by Ms Merkel that bondholders suffer some of the pain of the bail-outs, and some officials believe investors have been spooked ever since.
The move infuriated Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB chief, who scolded Europe’s heads of government at their next Brussels summit that the targeting of bondholders would exacerbate the crisis, a performance that led to a shouting match with Mr Sarkozy, who warned his compatriot to leave politics to the politicians.
But at the next summit, two months later, Mr Trichet was back with charts showing how borrowing rates had rocketed since the Deauville deal.
European leaders cautioned that no final agreement had been reached to revise the bondholder provisions in the ESM treaty, with one senior European official noting that EU finance ministers already had enough on their agenda in the coming weeks.
And despite the ECB and Commission views, it remains unlikely that Ms Merkel will give ground. The chancellor has made bondholder haircuts – known in eurocratese as “private sector involvement” – one of the cornerstones of her strategy to convince her parliament to go along with other parts of the eurozone’s rescue that rely on German guarantees.
One German official says Berlin does not even believe the issue is open for debate, and that bondholder participation in the ESM – which will be ensured through bond contracts known as “collective action clauses” – remains in effect.
But other officials note the ESM treaty will have to be reopened, since the July agreement gives the fund new powers that were not included in the version signed by finance ministers. It cannot go into effect before it is ratified by all 17 parliaments, and Germany is not expected to vote until December at the earliest.
Additional reporting by Quentin Peel in Berlin