Eurozone leaders prepare for Grexit

On one level, a government minister confirming that their colleagues are discussing the possible break-up of the eurozone is hardly a surprise. It would have been far more controversial had Finland’s foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja pitched up on the World at One this afternoon and told Martha Kearney that eurozone finance ministers were not engaged in contingency planning at some level. But Tuomioja’s comments that a Grexit was ‘something that everybody in every ministry of finance and in central banks, and national central banks, is looking into’ are still significant as they show politicians are less worried by the effect public hints about an exit will have and more by the inevitability of that exit. Tuomioja said:

‘We certainly do not hope this will happen. But without further support or changes into its programme it looks likely. Nobody is forcing Greece out, and it is up to the Greeks themselves to make this decision if that were to be the case.