The interest burden is low until 2021 but increases substantially thereafter because of payments of deferred interest on the EFSF loans and interest on new debt issued in financial markets. An exercise done at the Bank looks at the impact of smoothing interest payments for EFSF loans.
Looking at the right-hand-side diagram on the slide, the exercise entails that interest payments are smoothed, as in option 1, instead of remaining as they are now (the baseline scenario). What does such an exercise imply for the path of debt and gross financing needs?