Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 15-01-22

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PASOK leader Venizelos calls on voters to place party third in Sunday's elections

[02] Police arrest Xiros' alleged accomplice

[03] ELA liquidity available to Greek banks even after Feb 28

[01] PASOK leader Venizelos calls on voters to place party third in Sunday's elections

In his campaign tour, which will culminate on Friday in northeastern Greece (Thrace), Venizelos said the stakes at these elections were "whether the nation will take a step forward to exit the memorandum and reach a new stage or whether it will take several steps backwards, obliterating the sacrifices and achievements of the Greek people.

PASOK is interested in national stability, he said, and reiterated a 2012 proposal he had made for a collaborative government by all democratic pro-European forces. He said that despite the belief that a new radical government will force Europe to kneel before it, "the way they treat and have treated us - because they are politically short-sighted and inflexible - is simply an example of how they will treat the next and the following governments."

Venizelos thanked Sergei Stanishev, leader of the Party of European Socialists, who attended the meeting along with former PASOK ministers, MPs and other party members.

[02] Police arrest Xiros' alleged accomplice

The suspect aged 23, against who was pending an arrest warrant issued by the special appeals examining magistrate for participating in a terror group and for grand theft was arrested at the Athens' coastal suburb of Glyfada.

Police estimates that the 23-year-old would be the driver of the group that would carry out a planned attack against Korydallos prison.

He is also accused of having stolen the truck that was found in the area of Egaleo after Xiros' arrest.

The suspect is currently led to the prosecutor who is handling the case.

[03] ELA liquidity available to Greek banks even after Feb 28

A process of approving ELA by the European Central Bank has not changed since 2012 when Greek banks first resorted to the mechanism, the source said.

In any case, the emergency liquidity mechanism refers to credit institutions of a country, which in the case of Greece have been recently assessed through a stress test procedure. Greek banks borrowed as much as 120 billion euros early in 2012 from ELA but brought this number to zero by mid-2014 after the ECB began accepting Greek bonds as collateral for the refinance of domestic credit institutions. Cypriot banks are currently using the same process.

Late on Wednesday, Bank of Greece sources said that ECB approved a demand to offer liquidity to Greek banks because of an outflow of deposits from the banking system. Greek banks, no longer have adequate collateral to cover the gap created by the outflow of deposits with ECB funding, leading them to the emergency liquidity assistance mechanism. National Bank, however, said that the bank had adequate collateral to drain up to 4.0 billion euros directly from ECB.

ECB's approval covers a period of two weeks, according to ECB's regulations. Greek authorities will have to use the same procedure for any additional liquidity after 15 days. ELA offers liquidity at a higher interest rate compared with liquidity offered directly by ECB.

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