The guarantees have come under strong criticism since the Finance Ministry was ordered to publish all documents relating to the agreements by the Supreme Administrative Court.
Finns Party leader Timo Soini took out a full page ad in Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday to publish ”an open letter to the Finnish people” in which he argued that the guarantees did not really exist, and that the government and officials made a slew of errors when negotiating the deal and that they did not know what they were doing when they agreed the deal.
Meanwhile Helsingin Sanomat reported on Tuesday that several legal experts believed the ministry had ’outsourced’ preparation of much of the deal to a firm of lawyers. Hetemäki, who was appearing at parliament’s Finance committee on Tuesday, responded when reporters put that suggestion to him.
"Of course we knew what we were doing," said the senior official. "Granted, decisions over publishing the documents were made in different stages, and we tried to make as rigorous decisions as possible. We used outside help for that."
'Why write-off debt if you have guarantees?'
The Financial Times’ Alphaville blog has also pointed out that the guarantees would only be triggered if Greece unilaterally refused to honour its obligations to the EFSF—an extremely rare act, even for a heavily-indebted government. Under the terms of the agreement, according to FT Alphaville, the EFSF is allowed to declare a default but does not have to.
If no default is declared, then Finland cannot enforce its collateral. Hetemäki, however, said that it would be to Finland’s advantage to prevent debt forgiveness for Greece.
"Why would Finland accept debt forgiveness if we have guarantees?" asked Hetemäki rhetorically.