Papandreou says need for Greek aid package clarified within weeks

Within several weeks, the government will be able to say whether Greece will need the EU’s financial support to overcome its financial crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said in an interview with Newsweek on Saturday (April 17th). On Friday, he told lawmakers that Greece is ready to use the aid offered by the EU and the IMF if necessary, but this would not mean that the country is bankrupt. The EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank sending experts to Athens on Monday to discuss a proposed 40 billion-euro aid package in the form of loans.

In other news, EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn announced on Saturday that the bloc is investigating the role US banking and investment firm Goldman Sachs may have played in concealing Greece’s actual budget deficit, which resulted in the country’s grave financial crisis. Goldman Sachs is suspected of assisting Greece’s former government in reducing the deficit — on paper anyway — through financial manipulations, thus allowing Athens to attract more credit. The scheme was exposed in February.