For his last trip to the country, the German Chancellor admitted to having asked for a lot of efforts to the Greeks who paid a heavy tribute during the debt crisis.
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“Greco-German relations were rather agitated, I would say,” Admitted Angela Merkel during his ultimate trip to Athens, as Chancellor, Friday, October 29. Half-word, she expressed regrets, said they had “aware of the constraints and challenges that Greeks had been confronted” during the austerity cure for 2009 to 2018, to consolidate the stability of the euro. But she also noted that the adjustment would have been less brutal if Greece had undertaken key reforms in times of prosperity and claimed to have done everything so that this country remains in the euro area. In September, at a conference in Germany, Angela Merkel had been more explicit by admitting that “the most difficult time” of his mandate had been when she had “asked Greece”.
For the left day the newspaper of the editors (Efsyn), the Chancellor expressed “a compassion but without a word for the consequences of the austerity policies implemented in Greece under the pressure of Germany”. A few months ago, this same newspaper said that “Merkel had failed in” the affair of Europe “”, by imposing an excessive policy responsible for a crack in the European Union (EU) between the North and the south.
In power since 2005, the German Chancellor has really been known in Greece only from the debt crisis, four years later, when the Socialist Prime Minister George Papandréou, just elected, had confessed a Budget deficit three times more higher than official estimates. Greek debt then reached 127% of GDP.
“One of the most hated women” of the country
International markets had reacted immediately, the rating agencies devaluing the Greek debt note in speculative category. Then, in 2010, the German Minister of Finance at the time, Wolfgang Schäuble, supported by Angela Merkel, had demanded from Athens budget cuts and drastic tax increases in exchange for three international rescue plans of more than 300 Billions of Euro’s. Privatizations are then launched in arms to bail out the coffers of the State, pensions decrease, unemployment explodes, drug shortages and a lack of staff affect hospitals, the minimum wage falls to a little more than 500 euros …
Angela Merkel quickly became “the iron lady”, “one of the most hatest women” of the country as reminded on Thursday, the German tabloid Bild. At the height of the crisis, in 2012, the Chancellor was welcomed in Greece by a large anti-austerity gathering with Nazi-shaped crosses and caricatures the representative with a mustache of Hitler. In parallel, German media released the Greeks like lazy, and on the “one” Focus magazine, the Venus of Milos made a finger of honor at Greece.
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