Estonia PM says voter bailout fatigue easing, open to new Greece bailout

The small Baltic country, one of the euro zone's poorest members, has been praised by analysts as a model of northern European austerity pitted against crisis-hit southern Europe, a year ago Prime Minister Andrus Ansip told Reuters that bailout fatigue among voters threatened the currency bloc, but he now strikes a more optimistic chord.

"We have to understand that we are not just helping Greece or other countries, we are also protecting ourselves," Ansip told Reuters in an interview.

"So we are creating those firewalls, and when those firewalls are high enough then we don't have to spend so much money on fire extinguishers and most likely we will not get fire in our house. So we have to go on, we have to be flexible," International lenders estimate that Greece will need around 10-11 billion euros from the second half of 2014, although several euro zone governments are reluctant to extend further loans because of negative public opinion.

Greece has already been bailed out twice since 2010 with 240 billion euros worth of agreements coordinated by the European Central Bank, European Union and International Monetary Fund," bailout fatigue, this is not a hot topic in our country," he said, contrasting it to controversy surrounding bailouts that raged after Estonia joined the euro zone in 2011.

"When we decided to join the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), for many people in Estonia this was a message that we just lost 2 billion euros (in contributions to the euro zone bailout fund)," Ansip said, at that time, media and politicians in Estonia were angry that one of the euro zone's poorest nations had to help far richer Greece.

source reuters.com