Greece’s four biggest banks are waiting for European Union approval to receive 18 billion euros ($23 billion) of bonds issued by the European Financial Stability Facility for their recapitalization, Imerisia reported, without saying how it got the information.

EU finance ministers discussed the issue at a meeting in Brussels this week and the holdup is due to disagreement between the EFSF and the European Central Bank, the newspaper said. The ECB wants the banks to be given the bonds as share capital, so they can use them in its refinancing operations, while the EFSF wants preconditions to be set because of Greece’s political uncertainty, Imerisia said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Marcus Bensasson in Athens at mbensasson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net