With eurozone leaders meeting in another effort to broker a deal between Greece and its creditors, those who have lent to the near-bankrupt country must be close to giving up on ever getting their money back.
Greece owes €323bn (£228bn) to a combination of official and private creditors, equivalent to more than 175% of its GDP. Much of that debt mountain was built up by Greece receiving bailout packages, funded in part by its eurozone neighbours.
Germany is easily the most exposed country within the single currency union, but when adjusting exposure for the sizes of a country’s respective economy, Germany appears better placed than many of its neighbours to absorb losses.
Eurozone governments loaned Greece €52.9bn under the first bailout in 2010 and a further €141.8bn under a bailout in 2012. Germany’s exposure for the two bailouts is €57.23bn, with France owed €42.98bn, Italy owed €37.76bn and Spain €25.1bn, according to calculations by Reuters based on official data. Those sums are in addition to each countries’ contributions
to International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans made to Greece. When taking into account the countries’ exposure via bailouts through European Central Bank
(ECB) loans and their banking systems, Germany again has most to lose.
But when Bloomberg adjusted the figures as a share of 2013 nominal GDP levels, a very different picture emerged. When using these new calculations Germany falls to eighth place, with an exposure amounting to 2.37% of its economy’s size. France falls to seventh at 2.38% and Italy to fourth. On this measure, Slovenia at 3.06%, Malta at 3.03% and Spain at 2.78% appear to have the most to lose.
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