While extending support to Cyprus is a topic causing mixed feelings in Estonia, the government is poised toward supporting the Mediterranean state, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said on Thursday.
PM: Estonia poised toward supporting Cyprus
4th April 2013, 17:30
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"For us helping Cyprus is a topic that causes ambiguous feelings. It is very easy to say like very many people in several Western European countries are saying that it's not a systemic hotbed of crisis, that the danger will not spread and the contagion will not spread over the eurozone, and that consequently there's no point in helping them," Ansip said at the government press conference.
He said that even if at first thought the same approach could suit Estonia, after a bit more thinking the country is poised toward supporting Cyprus, "because should it ever happen that Estonia needs help it would be possible for someone to say citing the Cyprus precedent that Estonia is so small and contagion will not spread across the entire eurozone, and besides they have deposits of Russian depositors in their banks."
Whether or not that is true has no significance whatsoever, according to the Estonian prime minister. "If we now go out and make that precedent with Cyprus, we must be ready that this claim could be used on ourselves some time," he said.
"While I'm quite confident that we will not need help and it's just a very hypothetical possibility, under no circumstances must we accept that even though we take part in both EFSF and ESM on an equal basis with other countries of the eurozone, when the time for rendering help comes the big ones are systemic and the small ones please try and see how to get through trouble on your own," Ansip said. "That kind of approach doesn't suit Estonia in any way."