Mr. Klaus Regling:

Ireland was the first country to get money from us. Greece got bilateral loans first, and then also received money from the EFSF. A very simple legalistic answer would be that the EFSF and ESM treaty actually states that we can provide financing only when the euro area as a whole is threatened. That would be the legalistic answer. Otherwise, we would not become active. I think the reasons behind that are clear. When the crisis hit Ireland, it was the first EFSF case. Greece was hit earlier and the problem was solved initially in a different way. There was a serious threat for the euro area as a whole because we saw at the time a lot of contagion - by "contagion" I mean the problems jumping from one country to another and more and more countries losing market access. Then there was the threat that if no emergency financing was provided, countries would have had to leave. That was when we created the EFSF. That was one clear conclusion. That is why we are much better equipped today than we were in 2009 and early 2010. The EFSF was created in May and June 2010 to provide emergency financing. Also, from the investor side - the other side of the coin - it is very clear today that at the time, many of the big investors were not in a position to differentiate between the different European economies - they had not done their homework studying the differences - so when one country got into difficulties they did not know how to interpret that and they also withdrew from the other countries.