According to the Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen, “it was the Greeks who wanted to keep it secret”. However, the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court decided otherwise, and on May 14, the Government was forced to publish the terms of the contract it signed with Greece in 2012.

Under the agreement Athens pledged to provide financial collateral in exchange for a loan which formed part of the international bailout for the country.

The documents reveal that Finland and the Greece set up three bank accounts into which the money and financial securities used as collateral have since been deposited.

The matter had been referred to the court by the True Finns party and several media outlets, including Helsingin Sanomat. The daily is pleased with this “important and expected” decision —

It will strengthen the principle of the broadest possible implementation of transparency and publicity by government. The public has a right to be informed of all relevant official documents. [...] Helping the weak countries of the eurozone is a naturally difficult and controversial issue in Finland. Confidential documents will only serve to undermine confidence in decisions politicians have taken in the eurocrisis.

In the course of the eurozone crisis, Finland has stood out from among the eurozone states by demanding collateral from countries in difficulty as a condition for financial aid. The deal with Greece served as model for another deal concluded with Spain in July 2012.

“British and American speculative funds are gambling on the recovery of Greek banks,” explains Der Standard, which points out that —

Hedge funds are once again buying bank shares and corporate bonds to take advantage of the high yields they offer.

Since June 2012, speculation on government bonds has netted them hundreds of millions of euros, adds the daily.

It was the “last chance,” says To Vima. On 7 November the Greek Parliament approved the 18 billions in savings contained in the third memorandum signed by the coalition government of Antonis Samaras and the Troika of the EU, ECB and the IMF. Of the 299 deputies present, 153 deputies voted for the savings, and 128 against. Athens should now receive 31.5 billion euros from the EU and IMF and so avoid defaulting at the end of the month. “A Pyrrhic victory”, writes the weekly on its website –

“A thriller vote” for “A day of shame”, sums up To Ethnos in a pair of headlines. The vote was held late in the evening after long negotiations and with a crowd of more than 70,000 milling outside Parliament to protest against the new austerity measures. In his column, editorialist George Delastik takes offence at the spectacle put on by Greek democracy –

Whatever the conditions under which it was obtained, the "yes" vote solves nothing, warns Kathimerini –

For Greek daily Dimokratia, the publication of the “Lagarde List” by Hot Doc weekly has blown up a hurricane. Named after International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who was French finance minister when the list was handed over to her, the document lists 2,059 wealthy Greeks, some well known, who have parked their fortunes in Swiss bank accounts. First released by an HSBC employee, Lagarde then forwarded it to the Greek government in 2010. It was never followed up on.

Dimokratia is now looking into the circumstances under which the list was ignored. George Papaconstantinou, Greek finance minister at the time, insists he has forgotten to whom he forwarded it, while his successor Evangelos Venizelos said he has lost it. “Why so much mystery, and who benefits from it?” asks the newspaper, noting that “the road is now clear for a special parliamentary committee to examine charges against Papaconstantinou.”

Meanwhile, the only person really affected by this case is Hot Doc editor Kostas Vaxevanis, who was arrested and then released on October 28 for violating the law on publication of private data. He is to appear before a court in Athens on 29 October. That arrest may explain the caution shown by the rest of the Greek press. “Silence shrouds the Lagarde list,” notes To Ethnos, which remains rather sceptical –

The journalist and editor of Hot Doc published the list of Greeks with money in a Swiss bank account, with HSBC only, and beyond the reach of the taxman. He did not reveal the balances of their accounts, only their names, and he says the list is genuine. But is it really the list sent by Christine Lagarde, French finance minister in 2010, to her Greek counterparts? This list names ship-owners, industrialists, students, etc.... We should be able to see if the balances really do correspond to those names. Now that the editor has been arrested, the investigation has got off to a start, especially in Parliament, where politicians will be ‘interviewed’.

"Psssst!" whispers Süddeutsche Zeitung: Want to know the worst-kept secret of the big US and European banks? They're preparing for the worst: the exit of Greece from the eurozone and even the break-up of the eurozone itself, writes the newspaper. "An army of management consultants and lawyers" have been working for weeks on "the infinite number of things to do" in response to bankruptcy in Athens. Tasks range from how to manage riots in the crisis countries, where the safety of bank employees will be an issue, through to ensuring the stability of the hot lines for advising investors and preparing computer systems to reckon in drachmas.

The British Lloyds Banking Group has established a 'Euro Instability Committee' to come up with answers to loads of questions. Pragmatically, HSBC has verified whether its cash machines in Athens will be able to spit out drachmas. And, according to rumours, Goldman Sachs has a 'War Room' for critical situations in its London offices, named: "Room 17", after the 17 members of the eurozone.

The only thing to be sure of is that the industry does not want to repeat the experience of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, where on the Friday before it really happened, “the simulations were cancelled, because they wanted to keep their powder dry ready for a real crisis."

Finland is preparing for a full-blown currency crisis as tensions in the eurozone mount and will not tolerate further bail-out creep or fiscal union by stealth, reports The Daily Telegraph on its front page. The daily quotes an interview with the country’s finance minister Erkki Tuomioja, in which he is reported to have said –

There is a consensus that a eurozone break-up would cost more in the short-run or medium-run than managing the crisis. There are no rules on how to leave the euro but it is only a matter of time. Either the south or the north will break away because this currency straitjacket is causing misery for millions and destroying Europe’s future. It is a total catastrophe. We are going to run out of money the way we are going. But nobody in Europe wants to be first to get out of the euro and take all the blame.

In Austria, an interview with Michael Spindelegger, the vice chancellor, foreign minister and leader of the conservative ÖVP party, is splashed on the front page of Kurier under the headline “Cheaters out of the euro zone”. he told the Vienna daily –

We need more ways of kicking someone out of the monetary union; countries that do not uphold commitments. If these rules existed, we would already have felt the consequences.

However, experts who were quizzed about Spindelegger’s proposal, the daily reports that a Grexit would result in “unpredictable costs” for the EU and the risk of a euro-collapse “as the exclusion always hits the weakest, and anybody can be the weakest sometimes”. The comments come two weeks after an interview with Bavaria’s Finance minister Markus Söder in Bild created a buzz when he said Greece should leave the eurozone this year.

It will be “a troika to take on the Troika”, headlines Ta Nea.  The Greek government that emerged from the June 17 elections, and which will try to revisit the terms of the memorandum signed with the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF, is made up of three parties: New Democracy (right), led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Pasok (socialist), headed by Evangelos Venizelos, and the Democratic Left (Dimar) under Fotis Kouvelis.

“It is quite natural that June 20th is a very happy day in the life of Antonis Samaras,” comments To Ethnos –

Against all odds, he managed to be sworn in as prime minister, something that represents the peak of success and is of course what every politician dreams of. (...) So strong was his desire that he swore the oath even before waiting for the list of ministers to be finalised, as if he was afraid that his coalition partners might change their minds and drop out at the last moment. That's the amusing part. There’s more seriousness ahead. Everyone thinks this government is shaky, and in view of these alliances, it is. But for now, and considering the nature of the Greek system, it is the only one capable of holding.

Certainly, adds Kathimerini, “Greece finally has a democratically elected Prime Minister”, seven months after George Papandreou was replaced by the technocrat Lucas Papademos. The Athens paper notes, however, that “senior politicians from the higher echelons of Pasok and the Democratic Left will not participate in the front rows of government”, merely provide support to Parliament, and warns –

On the one hand it can be expected that the party leaders in the coalition will formulate policy on the basis of the past. What they should not forget though, is that this parliament is defined by extremes. This means that the percentage of power gained by the parties that form the opposition – from the left and the right – will correspond to the percentage of failure of the new government.

On May 7, in the aftermath of the second round of the French presidential contest and the first of what subsequently proved to be two general elections in Greece, Presseurop wondered, “Which election was the most important?”

In a further irony of an electoral calendar marked by the impact of the ongoing crisis, the second Greek general election (organised because no party was able to form a government in May) took place on June 17, the same date as the second round of general elections in France.

However, this time around, there can be no question about the relative importance of the two votes: Greece is front-page news in the European press, while the (fresh) victory of the French left is viewed as standard political fare.

Not only was the outcome of the Greek election uncertain, but it was also crucial for Europe. Greece’s continued future in the eurozone was at stake, and along with it the survival of the single currency as well as any number of unpredictable developments that could have emerged in response to an imminent Grexit.

In opting for the New Democracy conservatives ahead of the Syriza radical left coalition, Greek voters have, as the headline in today’s Guardian explains, given Europe “a chance”.

Having said that, Europe will still have to seize this chance, which, as it stands, will be no easy task. In the wake of  more than two years of “last chance summits” to save both Greece and the euro, the crisis remains ongoing.

Greece is still heavily indebted and handicapped by a failing state as well as a political class which appears to be unable to set aside old habits. Worse still, Spain and Italy appear to be drifting closer and closer to the same infernal maelstrom of debt that has dragged down Athens.

In Europe, the growing awareness that emergency initiatives have not worked has been accompanied by calls for more long-term solutions, and these will be the subject of discussions at the European Council meeting of 28 and 29 June – a summit that will likely be marked by divergent views which will underline the importance of the French general election result.

On the one hand, French President François Hollande, who now has the benefit of an absolute majority in the French parliament, will be pushing for a growth policy to counter the impact of the austerity in Europe, which he would like to see implemented in advance of further steps towards political and economic integration.

On the other, Chancellor Angela Merkel will be arguing for the establishment of an economic and political union that can exert greater control over national budgets as a first priority, ahead of measures to stimulate growth and a possible decision to introduce debt sharing.

In the debate, which will be in marked contrast to those that took place under Merkozy, there is a possibility that Hollande, who has found himself an ally in the person of Mario Monti, could modify a balance of power in which the view put forward Merkel has continued to prevail.

We have reached a point where to recover from the crisis, the Union must look beyond the expediency of emergency measures to a political horizon which includes but is not confined to the economy. At the same time, it must be careful to avoid long-drawn out byzantine discussions that would neglect the urgency of the current situation and invalidate the success of any future project.

Europe’s 27 member states must come up with a solution that satisfies both of these temporal criteria, and it is in this context that we can say that any respite offered by the result of the Greek elections will certainly be short-lived.

"Greek crisis: EU is preparing to shut the borders", leads Austria’s Der Standard. The Vienna daily learned this Tuesday from a European Council source that several countries are drawing up plans to bring back border controls in the event of an emergency in Greece, without specifying details. The preparations are justified by the fear of illegal capital flight abroad and by rising crime. Above all, European states are worried about illegal migration, thanks to Greece’s role as a transit point for illegal migrants from Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean. The number of illegal immigrants currently living in Greece is estimated at one million. Recalling the legal framework of the Schengen Agreement, the Standard writes –

Unlike the much-debated exit from the eurozone [...], closing the borders with Greece wouldn’t be a problem for its partners.

Again this week the Europeans – and not just Europeans – played at putting the fear into themselves by evoking the hypothesis of a Grexit as increasingly likely. In the wake of analysts who have been muttering for months about how and why Greece should leave the eurozone, it is now the turn of politicians and their appointed experts to dispense forecasts, duly priced, on the inevitability of this scenario.

At the extraordinary informal summit of 23 May, EU leaders agreed that the issue is no longer taboo and that each was studying the issue for themselves. At the same time they repeated their wish that Greece should remain in the eurozone – provided, of course, that it honour the commitments to its creditors. And there lies the central rub of the question: more than it is a question of economics, the “Grexit” is pre-eminently a political issue – just as was Greece’s joining the eurozone at a time when officials in Brussels and elsewhere knew very well that, like the Italians before them, the Greeks were not ready.

It is up to Europe’s leaders to decide whether or not they are willing to assume the economic costs to their banks and their taxpayers of a Greece exit from the eurozone – and the political costs too: loss of credibility of the single currency, the breakdown of the European integration model, and the flight of the "Cradle of Democracy", to name just a few. Their Greek counterparts, on the other hand, must decide how far they are willing to respect their commitments or, if they want to go back on them, how they intend to do so.

As for their exit from the eurozone, it seems not to be an option either for them or for most of their constituents. And it is precisely because the political and economic costs of a “Grexit” would be too high for both the Greeks and their partners that it is reasonable to bet on a “softer” outcome, which ought to be emerge following the June 17 parliamentary elections in Greece and France. 

Europeans will probably end up accepting a new restructuring and debt rescheduling for Greece, which will give a breather to a population tested by two years of severe austerity. Likely to be governed by an unprecedented majority and monitored closely by the EU-ECB-IMF “troika”, the Greeks will be forced to reform a state that has proved unjust and inefficient and to stop exploiting the crisis, the consequences of which are plain to all.

Given the persistence of the political stalemate in Greece and the risk that the debt crisis facing the country could bring down the single currency, Der Spiegel takes a clear position: "Farewell Athens" says the Hamburg-based weekly on its front page, explaining "why Greece should leave the euro now".

Echoing German concerns about the ability of the Greek political parties to form a government after the elections on May 6, Der Spiegel explains that "for Berlin, the situation in Greece is reminiscent of the Weimar Republic" and evokes the spectre of the regime that emerged in Germany after the First World War. With its stability undermined, it became a breeding ground for Nazism-

The so-called “shame'”of the Germans at [the conditions imposed by the] Versailles Peace Treaty seems to the Greeks to be echoed in the objectives of the financial recovery conditions demanded by Brussels. As in 1920s Germany, it is the extremist parties who benefit.

While it would be desirable for Greece to leave the euro zone, Der Spiegel notes,

Nobody can force the Greeks to leave the euro. But it is clear that it would be in their own interest. ...The exit of Greece from the euro zone is the only chance for the country to recover. The Greeks would have their own currency, that they could devalue. This would mean imports would be more expensive and exports would be cheaper ... Solidarity between European countries is not tied to membership of the euro, and this is why other countries must help Greece with its huge debts.

The weekly puts forward another argument: The departure of Greece from the monetary union "would be a strong signal to other bankrupt countries: you don’t blackmail Europe".

The countdown has begun. In 25 days, on May 6th, the Greeks will be called to the ballot box for decisive legislative elections. The date of the election was set on Wednesday April 11 by Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who has headed a coalition government since November 2011. For Greek daily To Ethnos, these elections are no less than "the most crucial early elections in modern Greek history."

The message sent to the nation by Lucas Papademos was expected in recent weeks. The May 6th date is not a surprise but the stakes will be decisive.

According to the latest opinion polls, the right-wing New Democracy Party is the frontrunner. But with voting intentions hovering between 13% and 20%, it would be forced to form an alliance with the socialist PASOK or other smaller parties.

Athens daily Ta Nea writes –

We must decide if we will vote reasonably or if we prefer political chaos. All the polling institutes agree that a coalition government will have to be formed because no party will have a sufficient majority to govern. The populist parties are rising in the polls, riding on an anti-austerity wave and Europe is watching us. This time, there is no place for campaign promises and political instability, a result of an exhausted two-party system, is a reality.

“Voluntary isolation, hegemonic claims, lack of goals”. Following the annual Königswinter conference held this spring in Oxford, that’s how the Süddeutsche Zeitung sums up the respective positions of the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union. The 2012 version of this conference of senior politicians and members of think-tanks, which established in 1950 to improve relations between the two countries, has left "an impression as honest as it is sombre over the three-way relationship between the British, Germans and Europe," notes the Munich paper –

The United Kingdom is observing the Greek operation very sceptically, and feels the new German forcefulness verges on a claim to hegemony. Equally suspicious, the Germans feel the UK has no grasp of the political, economic and historical logic of a united Europe.

By refusing to discuss their respective concerns and questions about the future of Europe, the Süddeutsche Zeitung notes, the conference participants have perfectly illustrated the mistrust between German and Britain – two countries that –

... instead of building bridges, are burrowing into tunnels.