Regling, right, with European Central Bank president Mario Draghi at a press conference
Klaus Regling has been the head of the eurozone’s rescue funds – first the temporary European Financial Stability Facility, now the permanent European Stability Mechanism – since the outset of the debt crisis, a perch that has given him a unique insight into the five years of occasionally contentious deliberations over the bloc’s five bailouts: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus.
But as the EFSF turned into the ESM, and as the €500bn ESM gained staff and authority, Regling’s own role in eurozone debates has grown – particularly on the issue of Greek debt, where he has been a frequent and outspoken critic of the argument, made both in Athens and by the International Monetary Fund, that the heavy debt burden is what ails the Greek economy.
Two years ago, in an interview with our friends and rivals at the Wall Street Journal, Regling in essence sounded the death knell for a November 2012 deal where eurozone governments had promised debt relief for Athens as long as it achieved a primary budget surplus – something it achieved by the end of 2013. As Regling predicted, the eurozone did not restructure Greece’s debts despite Athens living up to its side of the 2012 agreement and posting a surplus.
In an interview this week with the Financial Times, Regling has done something similar. As part of July’s controversial €86bn bailout deal, creditors again held out the promise of debt relief. And Regling is now suggesting that even if it does occur, a restructuring will not be on the scale Athens and the IMF had been arguing for just four months ago.
Our story on the Regling interview is here, but as is our practice at the Brussels Blog, we’re offering an annotated (and slightly edited for length) transcript for readers who want to hear more from Regling below.
Read more