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Malta surrenders bid for collateral against guarantees to eurozone bailout fund
Parliament will debate today the approval of Malta’s contribution and guarantees to the eurozone’s bailout fund, which is set to rescue Greece through the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
5 October 2011, 12:00am
Karl Stagno-Navarra
Karl Stagno-Navarra
2 min read
The House – which is set to convene this evening – calls for the approval of a significant increase in Malta’s contribution to the fund which now stands at €704.33 million.
Malta is one of the last to approve its contribution, as the eurozone awaits the parliaments of Slovakia and the Netherlands to also approve their share to the fund.
But today’s parliamentary debate will also hear the reasons why Malta has renounced its claim for collateral in exchange for €400 million in guarantees it will be offering.
Speaking to the media, finance minister Tonio Fenech said that after lengthy discussions within the eurozone group and internally, it has been decided that it would not be in the country’s interest to insist for collateral.
According to Fenech, there is a high price to be paid to secure collateral, making the costs higher than the benefits.
After Finland secured collateral for its contribution to the fund, Malta together with Austria and the Netherlands and some other countries pushed for collateral, but were however warned that collateral comes with a down-payment of a multi-million share of the post-2013 European Stability Mechanism (ERM) at one go in 2013 rather than over a five-year period.
Meanwhile, finance minister Tonio Fenech – who returned last night from Luxembourg – will introduce the Participation and Guarantees under the European Financial Stability Facility (Amendment) Bill which was published in the Government Gazzette.
Negotiations to make European banks take bigger losses on Greek sovereign debt will be opened on October 13 after the EU-IMF "troika" reports back on the state of finances in Athens.
The next, sixth instalment of the first EU-IMF bailout has meanwhile been delayed until next month, after the eurozone demanded that Athens comes with "additional measures" to plug austerity shortfalls this year, in 2013 and 2014.
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Anyone ever thought how certain people in power got their degree? I feel really speechless how incompetent certain people are. The only conclusion that i can write is this......
We are being treated like mushrooms... Left in the dark and being fed bull****!
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I agree with CE it is a give and take situation.
We give the EU takes.
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Oh comeon guys. Its all about give and take. The EU took 704m out of our pockets while we got Voluntary burden sharing. You can't expect better don't you?
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Someone, oh please someone tell me that it is Monopoly money that they are talking about here and not our hard earned tax collections.
Am I getting it right? We, Cwiec Maltin, are helping out our European counterparts? WOW. That's fantasssssticccc!!!!
Not bad for our stupidity after all.
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I hate to image the taxes which are going to be imposed on the Maltese population just to pay off the ever increasing debt.
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X'biza! Tal-Wahx.
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The good news is that we Maltese have GONZIPN fighting for our rights,but when our eoropean neighbours come in he is just a YESMAN and accepts every kind of sh.t they throw at us.
What a clown.
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700 million euros to bail out Greece and not ONE CENT to Gozo to up grade its state of the shame hospital.
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May I ask the honourable minister for finance Tonio Arseinall Fenech were he's going to get those €700 million when he was unable to finance the Valletta fiasco for €80 million?
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The shame of it all is that we can't help our airline, AirMalta, with a fraction what Greece needs, we have to beg the EU to let us do so.
Once G.Borg Olivier while negotiating Malta's independence was described as losing his shirt and his pants, this incompetent government has even lost his underwear having to cover up his shriveled prunes with his hands.
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So Malta or better still GonziPN is no longer insisting for collateral.
As always, whoever dictates to tiny Malta, GonziPn humbly bows his head in submission! And €700 million is no joke.
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700 million euros now, abracadabra say cheese and it's 1 billion euros or more before you know it - good old Trichet will enjoy his golden pension, and Malta will have accumulated in the space of 1 year on top of its mounting public debt what took even the dinosaur age dockyards 40 years to accumulate - another 1 billion euros write off coming our way, il Cavaliere & co will see to that, our Govt does not have to do anything. Not that it is.
I hope I stand to be corrected - has anyone noticed even the slightest sign of an attempt at putting Maltese diplomacy to good use to trade off Malta's new debt obligations of 700 million in return for some vital concessions to let us rescue our economy without having Brussels citing its law book chapter and verse in our face.
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Regardless of what your politicians tell you, we can all kiss this money goodbye. Also, how come the government kept the the increase of 300 million from 400 million euro's a secret from the citizens of Malta. Shouldn't we have voted on this money instead of the government. So we only have a refenda when it's converient for our politicians. As for Tonio, he seems to be an opportunist and power grabbing individual. Yep, we are now repaying our loan for the money we were suppose to get from the EU for the 2006-2-13. The politician, whether Euro, PN, PL are always taking advantage of us and they have been doing the same with any other major issue out there like the illegal migrant issue when they are trying to change malta's identity. People, kiss this money goodbye. YOu will never see it again, mark my word. We will only be paying more like one BIG TAX to our BIG BROTHERS IN EUROPE.
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This is getting hilarious by the day. So the EU granted Malta Euro 885 million to be spent in the period 2006-2013, and we have forked out Euro 704 million in one year for Greece's bailout, which we had to borrow in order to lend! And which, as things appear, will inevitably mean that these are bad debts. Added to this is the questionable utilisation rate by Government of the EU funds available, and we can safely say that Malta is already a contributing country.
