Cameron victory on Greek bailout: EU chiefs cave in and rule out cash grab from Britain

David Cameron last night won a key victory to save British taxpayers from paying any extra money to bail out Greece.After crunch talks in Brussels, the Prime Minister faced down a German bid to force the UK to pay up.Mr Cameron read the riot act to EU leaders, arguing that it would be ‘quite wrong’ for the UK to contribute to the rescue act.EU president Herman Van Rompuy caved in late last night and agreed that the conclusions of the Brussels summit would rule out any cash grab from Britain.
Britain has already contributed £12.5billion to the bailouts of Ireland, Portugal and Greece, through both the EU and the IMF.The ruling means that Britain will contribute around £1billion to the bailont through the International Monetary Fund but will be spared another raid on the public purse from the EU.Last night a Downing Street source said: ‘This is the right result for the British taxpayer.’ The communique to be signed by all 27 EU leaders today will confirm that only IMF and eurozone nations will pay.
It came after a fraught day in which the Germans had tried to force Britain into a corner.Asked if the EU-wide European Financial Stability Mechanism would be excluded from the bailout, worth £100 billion, Mr Van Rompuy said: ‘Yes.’Amid signs that EU nations outside the single currency might be asked to cough up, the Prime Minister’s aides had rushed to seek assurances from Germany that the UK would not be railroaded into contributing.