The debt-laden nation is selling its 10,000 square foot consular residence in London’s Holland Park. Estate agent Marsh & Parsons recently sold a 4,000 sq ft house in nearby Clarendon Rd for £12m, and homes similar to the 115-year-old townhouse currently attract rents of around £25,000 per week

Also up for sale is the partially-ruined Palace of Tatoi, 16 miles from Athens, which was home to the royal family prior to them being forced to flee the country in 1967. The property comes as part of an estate that includes 40 outbuildings, stables and the graves of several members of the royal family dating back to 1880.

Photo: The Royal Palace in Tatoi, Attica, owned by former King Constantine. 

Other lots will include an office building in Brussels, property in Belgrade, a home in Llubljana and land in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Last year Greece agreed to raise €50bn before 2020 by auctioning off assets including the state gas utility DEPA and gas distributor DESFA as part of conditions attached to its €240bn bail-out rescue. The country has even identified 40 uninhabited islands which it plans to lease out for as long as 50 years.

So far only €1.8bn has been raised and the latest property sales are unlikely to be completed before 2013.

The newly-appointed head of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, which is tasked with selling off the assets, Takis Athanasolpoulos, said that a further €300m is expected to be raised before the end of the year in two sales: a former Olympic broadcasting centre and the Hellenic State Lottery.

Meanwhile, the Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen added to the criticism of the eurozone’s big rescue plan – European Central Bank’s new bond-buying plan. “It has led to a positive situation, but I’m not fully sure if it will help in the long run,” he said.

He added that traders were not listening to Spain’s efforts to reduce its debts and avoid a bail-out. “The problem is that whatever the countries do, the interest rates do not necessarily follow, as the markets do not analyse each country’s own action but they are afraid of a domino effect,” he said.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, was forced again to defend his austerity efforts to MPs. “The policy is to reduce the deficit because if we don’t reduce the deficit we aren’t going to be able to finance ourselves,” he said in parliament.

The hard task is being made harder by capital outflows: a total of €326bn was pulled out of Banks in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece in the year to the end of July, according to research by Bloomberg.

France and Germany continued to trade arguments over the scope of the planned European bank supervisor. Andrea Enria, the chairman of the exisiting one, the European Banking Authority, complained of “stringent resource constraints” and a staff shortage. He told the Economic and Monetary affairs committee of the European Parliament: “Notwithstanding the generous support provided by national supervisory authorities, which have seconded a significant number of staff at our premises during the periods of our most intense workload, it remains difficult for us to fulfil our tasks under such stringent resource constraints.”

Telegraph

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