BRUSSELS: The European Commission ruled out Wednesday a restructuring of Greek debt, as EU and other international officials prepared to pore over a new emergency budget in Athens.
"We are ruling out the scenario to which you are referring," said Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, responding to a journalist's question on press reports to that effect.
"We are not aware of any such discussions," he underlined.
Auditors from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which last year bailed out Greece from near-bankruptcy, are to meet Greece's finance minister to discuss a new, three-year draft budget.
The finance ministry has admitted that because of a deeper-than-expected recession, the country's 2010 public deficit would be higher than the official estimate of 9.4 percent.
Vasso Papandreou, a senior figure inside the socialist party, has called for the government to seek a restructuring of its huge debt of over 300 billion euros ($426 billion).
Several analysts expect that outcome, with Ciaran O'Hagan, head of rates research at Societe Generale in Paris, saying there is "a 60-percent chance that Greece will restructure its debt."
A planned Greek borrowing sortie in 2011 has already been postponed with rates hitting nearly 16 percent for two-year loans and over 12 percent for 10-year bonds.
But Rehn's spokesman said quarterly assessments of Greece's progress "one after another, have been positive.
"Greece is on track," the spokesman insisted.
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