A previously-unpublished report prepared by European Commission staff has found that financial speculation did not push Greece towards default, despite fears expressed by the German, French, Greek and Luxembourgeois heads of state and calls for legislation to curb trading in credit default swaps.

The "Report on Sovereign CDS", released to a Dutch newspaper following a freedom of information request and obtained by Financial News, said: "The empirical investigation that has been conducted by the task force on how the sovereign CDS and bond markets interact provides no conclusive evidence that developments in the CDS market causes higher funding costs for member states."