New Call to Greece to Sell Off Its Assets

Wall Street Journal
May 23, 2011

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said that Greece should set up an agency to privatize state assets along the lines of the German institution that sold off East German enterprises in the 1990s.

"I would very much welcome it if our Greek friends would set up a state-privatization agency after the model of the German Treuhandanstalt," Mr. Juncker said in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine set to run Monday.

Mr. Juncker, who is also chairman of the Eurogroup of euro-zone finance ministers, said such an agency should include foreign experts among its staff.

"The European Union will accompany the privatization program as closely as if it were carrying it out itself," Mr. Juncker told the magazine, adding that Greece could gain more from privatizations than the €50 billion ($71 billion) it has estimated.

Mr. Juncker also said a so-called soft restructuring, or extending the maturities of Greek debt, could only be considered once Greece has consolidated its budget. "Then we can consider to extend the maturities of public and private loans, and lower interest rates," he is quoted as saying.

Mr. Juncker also called on Greece's two biggest political parties to end their bickering. "The government and the opposition should declare jointly that they commit to the reform agreements with the EU," Mr. Juncker said.

More