Hungary has contingency plan for Greece exit, says PM

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Hungary's government has a contingency plan for a possible exit by Greece from the eurozone, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday.

"The government has a plan B," Orbán said, adding that Greece's departure from the monetary union would come with extraordinarily serious consequences.

Orbán said the government has ideas about how to finance the country if international government securities markets were to lock up, what parts of the budget to change, and how to go beyond convention to put in motion the engines of growth.

EU leaders "all pray that the plan A will be carried out," he added.

Orbán said European Union members in Central Europe are jointly presenting a package of proposals on possible EU incentives for growth. Among the planned elements of the package are access by the Visegrád Group countries -- Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia -- to activities related to the European Central bank's foreign exchange swaps, a stop to the withdrawal of capital by parent banks from their units in Central Europe, a more flexible reverse VAT collection system, and the continued use of the Cohesion Fund for its original purpose, he said.

The countries are expected to unveil the package's details at an EU summit at the end of June.

Orbán said questions of dispute between Hungary and the EU are being put into a European scope of comparison.

"It turns out that there are no such legal solutions in Hungary's economy or constitutional system that are not already familiar in other member states," he said.

Orbán said he was looking with high hopes to the coming weeks with regard to a possible decision on the EU's excessive deficit procedure against Hungary.

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