EU finance officials to focus on Greece, Italy

PanARMENIAN.Net - European Union finance officials will discuss Greece's intractable debt crisis and the worsening situation in Italy on Monday, July 11, with the threat of contagion to the euro zone's third-largest economy growing, Reuters reported.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, will meet European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup, for talks in Brussels around midday (1000 GMT), ahead of a meeting of the 17 euro zone finance ministers later on Monday.

Van Rompuy's spokesman described the gathering, which also includes European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and the EU's economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, as a "coordination, not a crisis meeting," and said Italy would not be on the agenda.

However, senior EU sources said it would be impossible not to discuss Italy following a large sell-off in Italian bonds and stocks that the Italian media have dubbed "black Friday."

Austria's Finance Minister Markia Fekter said Italy was among the issues to be discussed, saying ministers wanted to quiz Italy about how it was handling the situation. "We have a Eurogroup meeting today and tomorrow Ecofin. We will (discuss) the IMF decisions and we will also have questions for the Italian minister there," she told reporters.

The market pressure is due in part to Italy's high sovereign debt and sluggish economy, but also to concern that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may be trying to push out his long-time finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, who has promoted deep spending cuts to control the budget deficit.