No chance of immediate loosening of cash for Greece, says ECB's Nowotny
Ewald Nowotny, a member of the European Central Bank’s policy-setting Governing Council, dismissed speculations suggesting an immediate loosening of funding for Greece.
The head of the Austrian central bank said the ECB remained against accepting the country’s bonds as a security in exchange for a new round of funds from Europe’s central bank.
"There is always a lot of noise in such a situation and I think the important point is to distinguish the noise from the facts," Nowotny told CNBC television.
"For us, it is quite clear that we have certain conditions to be met.
"The one condition is [...] whether we can accept for instance Greek assets, Greek bonds, as collateral. The answer is, for the time being: ‘No’."
In February, the ECB told Athens it would no longer accept Greek bonds in return for financial aid, forcing the Greek central bank to finance its lenders and provide tens of billions of euros of emergency liquidity to prevent the country from defaulting.
Nowotny added the position of the ECB had not changed since.
"One has to be quite clear. We do not have a possibility to do some, let's say, financing outside our rules,” he said.
"I know there had been some ideas floating around that we might give some kind of interim financing just like that. I don't see any legal possibility for that.”