PARIS: A Greek exit from the eurozone will be on the agenda ifAthens fails to impose austerity measures required in its EU-IMFbailout deal, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said onSunday. And commenting on the Spanish government's refusal to acceptforeign aid to help it through its debt crisis, he said thesovereignty of the Madrid administration should be respected. Moscovici was responding to questions about comments made byGreece's radical leftist leader Alexis Tsipras who said Friday hewanted to scrap the bailout deal if he won the June 17 elections.
Moscovici said he hoped Greece would remain in the eurozone. But commenting on Tsipras' position, he told French television:"That poses a problem. "If the Greeks themselves do not respect their commitment, then wewould find ourselves in a situation which would be infinitely morecomplicated," he added. Asked if his ministry was working on a scenario in which Greecequit the eurozone, he stressed that while they might have looked atit "here and there" they were working on plans to avoid it ratherthan anticipate it. Tsipras' Syriza party surprised Europe on May 6 by placing secondin an inconclusive election in which no party was able to eitherwin an overall majority or broker a coalition government.
But voters fed up with salary and pension cuts pipe welding machine factory to more radical parties. A series of opinion polls published Friday showed that neitherSyriza nor its main rival, the conservative New Democracy party,would win an outright majority in new elections called after lastmonth's electoral deadlock. The June 17 vote will determine whether Greece will meet the termsof a deal under which the European Union and International MonetaryFund agreed to lend it hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) inreturn for economic reforms. On Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy tried to playdown fears the country would need an international bailout, sayingthe country would eventually find its way out of the financialcrisis on its own.
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