国际英语新闻：EU to activate aid package for Greece soon

BRUSSELS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission will soon go through procedures to activate an aid package to Greece after the country formally asked for help on Friday.

The procedure will not take weeks and will be relatively fast, European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio told reporters at a press briefing.

"It will be rather quick in the sense that we have been monitoring the situation, and the developments in the bonds market in particular," Altafaj said. "If there is an issue we have been working on night and day during the last week, it is the Greek situation."

A Greek flag flies in the wind at a park in central Athens April 23, 2010. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou asked for the activation of a euro zone and International Monetary Fund aid package on Friday aimed at pulling the debt-laden country out of a debt crisis

Altafaj said that there is a commitment on all the members of the eurozone to participate in the mechanism and to ensure that the approval of the funding is rapid.

"We are not foreseeing any obstacle here, we are going to work in such a way that the sequences are taken through quickly and effectively, " he said.

The European Commission and the European Central Bank will issue an opinion as to the need to activate the mechanism subsequent to the request, he added.

Members of the eurogroup will formally decide on the activation of the mechanism after the opinion is issued, he said.