I expect – sooner or later – perhaps sometime after the German elections, there is still time, that some sort of debt relief will be given to my country, along the lines of the Eurogroup statement of 15 June (“extension of maturities between 0 and 15 years”), here at the Bank of Greece, I just gave you the cut-off figure, 8.5 years according to our own DSA, which makes our debt sustainable and will be an enormous help for ECB President Draghi.
In terms of timing, when could all this happen, given that the QE programme officially ends in December this year? The crucial parameter here is ‘tapering’, which means that for the first six months or perhaps more in 2018, the ECB will keep buying government bonds, but at a diminishing rate (from € to € to € billion, etc.)