FinMin heads to Brussels, after PM attends the EU Council

Concern over Greece’s debt payments worth 6.5 bln euros that need to be made by the end of June

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will be in Brussels on Friday, a day after the EU Council attended by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Varoufakis is expected to give a speech at the Brussels Forum organized by the German marshall Fund to be attended by a number of high-ranking officials such as former EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Hungarian-born American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist George Soros.

At the College of European Commissioners on Wednesday there was concern over Greece as technical negotiations had failed in Athens. Technical groups were told to be on standby for casual meetings with representatives of the Greek Finance Ministry, mainly on tax matters that are tied with new debt settlements.

The situation in Greece, however, has concerned Brussels are funds are being ‘scraped’ from the bottom and institutions are worried if there is adequate cashflow to meet payments worth 2 bln euros due on Friday.

The European Central Bank on Wednesday gave a small margin, around 400 mln euros for banks from ELA, even though there is a huge struggle to keep an adequate cash flow to buy T-bonds from the state and also deal with pressure for more withdrawals following statements made by EU officials that point to solutions that would require capital controls for Greece. The ECB is expected to discuss the Greek matter again over the coming week.

On Wednesday, the Greek public sector finally received the 1.6 bln euros from bonds so as to make Friday’s payments. There are 3 billion euros also benchmarked for Greece at ELA if worst comes to worst.