By MATINA STEVIS, The Wall Street Journal
LUXEMBOURG—Greece will need to pass fresh budget cuts next year to hit the targets set by its international creditors, a senior European Central Bank official said Monday, setting the stage for another clash with Athens over how much austerity the country can bear.
ECB executive board member Jörg Asmussen, appointed last year from the German Finance Ministry, also said Greece's international creditors will need to do more to cover the country's financing needs, starting from mid-2014.
He put the figure at additional €5 billion to €6 billion ($6.8 billion to $8.1 billion)—the first time a senior European official has stated such figures publicly, although in line with earlier, unofficial estimates made by others.
"First and foremost [it] is important that [Greece] will close the significant fiscal gap that is there for next year," Mr. Asmussen told reporters on his way into a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers here.
The Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, conceded there was a financing gap but denied that the government's budget plans had strayed off track.
Greece is talking to euro zone capitals and the International Monetary Fund to resolve the issue, but aren't discussing a third bailout—on top of the €240 billion that has already been pledged to Athens, he said.
The additional financing needs—beyond what was foreseen when Greece's last bailout was designed—relate to the approximately €4.4 billion worth of Greek government bonds held by national central banks in the euro zone.
While a tacit understanding was in place that they would allow those to roll over, alleviating immediate pressure for cash on Athens, they have since said they are no longer prepared to do that.
Greece's bailout, due to expire at the end of 2014, will now only keep the government fully financed until mid-2014.
Questions are also looming about whether Athens will need to pass more politically unpopular austerity measures.
Mr. Stournaras flatly rejected the claim that there is a "significant fiscal gap" in the country's 2014 budget, and told reporters that Mr. Asmussen didn't repeat this claim inside the meeting.
The chairman of the group of euro-zone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem from the Netherlands, said that "there are fiscal issues still to be addressed," but he refused to specify the size.
Experts from the troika of institutions that oversees Greece's bailout—the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF—have suspended a fact-finding mission to Athens. While Mr. Stournaras assured reporters the experts would return by the end of October, Mr. Dijsselbloem said Greece's financing issues would only be discussed in December.
This is seen as a delay from an earlier, informal understanding that the question would be resolved in November.
Greece's leaders have ruled out taking additional austerity measures in the country's 2014 budget, but they will need to explain how they will close the fiscal gap.
"Greece is never easy," EU economics chief Olli Rehn said after the ministers' meeting. "The ball is in Greece's court."
