Brussels Blog

At Friday’s gathering of eurozone finance ministers in Dublin, the so-called eurogroup is expected to give a “political endorsement” of the details of Cyprus’ €10bn bailout programme, according to a senior EU official.

Ahead of that meeting, documents related to that sign-off have begun to leak out, including the always-interesting “debt sustainability analysis” (which Brussels Blog got its hands on and posted here) and an equally intriguing document titled “assessment of the actual or potential financing needs of Cyprus”, which we’ve also posted here.

As our friends and rivals at Reuters first reported, the most unexpected thing in the documents is the revelation that Nicosia will help reduce its debt burden by selling off “the excess amount” of gold reserves held by the Cypriot central bank, which is expected to raise €400m.

But the details of the rest of what will be the “contribution by Cyprus” to the bailout may be more significant. It is spelled out in detail on page four of the second document and makes clear just how damaging the mishandling of the first bailout agreement was.

Originally, Cyprus was to contribute €7bn (€5.8bn from the now-infamous bank levy and the rest from a new withholding tax on investment profits) to the €17bn total cost of the bailout. Just over a week later, the amount Nicosia will contribute almost doubled, to €13bn, and the total price tag had increased to €23bn. Read more

The EU's Rehn, left, with Cypriot finance minister Sarris at the outset of Friday night's meeting

With the eurozone’s €10bn Cyprus bailout now laid waste by the country’s parliament, the recriminations are likely to begin almost immediately. In fact, they started even before the vote was held — almost as soon as it was announced early Saturday morning that the programme included a 6.75 per cent levy on bank accounts under €100,000.

Since then, almost all officials involved in the talks have said it wasn’t their decision to seize deposits from small savers.

Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, was the first out of the gate, telling public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that it wasn’t his idea. “We would obviously have respected the deposit guarantee for accounts up to €100,000,” Schäuble said. “But those who did not want a bail-in were the Cypriot government, also the European Commission and the ECB, they decided on this solution and they now must explain this to the Cypriot people.”

That statement sparked anger over at the ECB, which denied any involvement in levying smaller depositors. “I want to emphasise that it wasn’t the ECB that pushed for this special structure of the contribution which has now been chosen. It was the result of negotiations in Brussels,” Jörg Asmussen, the ECB executive board member who handled the central bank’s negotiations Friday night, said Monday. “We provided technical help with the calculations, as always, but we didn’t insist on this special structure.

This morning, Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, added his name to the list, saying he had been in favour of exempting smaller depositors “from the beginning”.

So where does the truth lie? We pieced together the events of Friday night and Saturday morning for Monday’s dead tree edition of the FT, but it appears more forensics might be needed to get this all straight. Having talked to multiple participants, here’s an even more detailed account. Read more

International lenders agreed to a €10bn bailout of Cyprus early Saturday morning after 10 hours of fraught negotiations, which included convincing Nicosia to seize €5.8bn from Cypriot bank deposits to help pay for the rescue, a first for any eurozone bailout.

The cash from Cypriot account holders will come in the form of a one-time 9.9 per cent levy on all deposits over €100,000 that will be slashed from their savings before banks reopen Tuesday, a day after a Cypriot holiday. An additional 6.75 levy will be imposed on deposits below that level.

Cypriot finance minister Michalis Sarris said his government had already moved to ensure deposit holders could not make large withdrawals electronically before Tuesday’s open; Jörg Asmussen, a member of the European Central Bank executive board, said a portion of deposits equivalent to the levies would likely be frozen immediately.

“I am not happy with this outcome in the sense that I wish I was not the minister that had to do this,” Mr Sarris said. “But I feel that the responsible course of action of a minister that takes an oath to protect the general welfare of the people and the stability of the system did not leave us with any [other] options.” Read more