Beurzen zakken door Oostenrijks uitstellen van goedkeuring voor uitbreiding van het noodfonds (en)
Three Austrian opposition parties - the two far-right parties - the BZO and the Freedom Party, and the Greens - caused a steep drop on Wall Street on Wednesday (14 September) after delaying ratification of the EU's new rescue fund.
The scare took place after the parties blocked the Austrian parliament's finance committee from scheduling a plenary vote on the fund at the next regular full session on 21 September.
The move followed publication of a readers' poll in the Krone tabloid newspaper saying that 92 percent of people want Greece to be evicted from the eurozone.
The Austrian finance ministry shortly afterward issued a clarification that the strengthening of the Eurozone rescue mechanism, the European Financial Stability Fund, can still be ratified during the next full sitting of the parliament, in mid-October, or more quickly if the parliament calls an extraordinary EFSF session on 30 September or 3 October.
Austrian ratification itself is not in doubt because the ruling coalition has enough seats to make the simple majority required to pass the measure. But the finance committee makes decisions on a two-thirds majority.
The glitch saw a violent reaction from financial markets, however.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average in the US plunged 112 points in a matter of minutes after the finance committee made the news, but rallied almost as quickly when the full picture became clear. Shares in French bank Societe Generale, which is heavily exposed in Greece, also fell 10 percent.
The FTSE 100 and the value of the euro also slipped backward before seeing a later rise after the Austrian government clarified that the measures will still pass the parliament despite the finance committee's move.
EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn over the summer tried to soothe market concerns by predicting the second Greek bail-out and the expanded EFSF would be fully in place by the end of September.
But with two weeks left until the self-imposed deadline, just two out of the 17 eurozone countries that need to ratify the deal - Belgium and France - have so far completed the process.
Slovakia, another problem country, sent mixed signals on its position on Wednesday.
On the one hand, Prime Minister Iveta Radicova i survived a no-confidence vote brought by opposition parties Smer and the Slovak National Party over alleged government corruption.
On the other hand, a survey by pollsters MVK said that while 47.6 percent of voters support the new EU rescue measures, a large minority - 32.9 percent - is against ratification. A full 51.2 percent of people who vote for the junior coalition party, the libertarian Freedom and Solidarity faction, are against the new bail-outs.
The results lend weight to Freedom and Solidarity bid to put off ratification until at least December so that the full implications of Slovakia's participation can be understood.
"[The] EFSF itself is the greatest threat to euro. The only real solution to the debt crisis is rigorous enforcement of the currency bloc’s regulations on budget deficits and public debt", the party's leader, Richard Sulik, earlier told EUobserver.
"It’s definitely not possible to solve a debt crisis by creating new debts".