European Council

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

May I congratulate the Prime Minister on his very significant success in largely keeping Britain out of this Greek bail-out, despite what the previous Chancellor agreed? Could he tell the House what has changed given that he was able to keep us out of this Greek bail-out when that did not prove possible with regard to Portugal?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that what changed was that because we were not involved in the first Greek bail-out, we were able to make the argument that we should not be involved in subsequent bail-outs—particularly because, as we are not members of the eurozone, we were not involved in the design of the new package. None the less, we were at risk, because there were countries that wanted to push the EFSM and its use for Greece, but we ran a very strong diplomatic campaign, using every lever at our disposal to persuade our good friends and allies in Europe that it would not be fair for Britain to pay, and we achieved that. It was not an insignificant achievement, because it took quite a lot of negotiating heft to get it done.