Merkel and Tsipras: The Political Romance – Handelsblatt

Tsipras and Merkel

Alexis Tsipras no longer eyed Angela Merkel long only with skepticism

(Photo: AP).

Athens There were times, and they are not so long ago, Alexis Tsipras lost a good word about Angela Merkel. A few months ago denounced the then Greek opposition leader, German Chancellor as a “most dangerous politician in Europe”, which have a “done humanitarian catastrophe” in Greece and “the life of the European people play poker.”

Something would not come to him today as Premier lips. Eulogies are Tsipras namely to Merkel not by itself. But as it radiates when the Chancellor welcomed him as one of its recent increasingly frequent Tête-à-Tête – this is worth a thousand words.

Almost every day to advise the two, as the debt crisis to be solved and a Grexit should be avoided. It is true that the federal government will have a Greek exit from the monetary union in view, the Chancellor stressed nevertheless regularly that she wants to “reserve in the euro area” the Greeks.

reparations from Athens and Germany’s legal position

• 1942 had the Bank of Greece the German Reichsbank to grant a loan of that time 476 million Reichsmark, after the war, he was to be repaid.

• 1953 moved the London Debt Agreement regulating German reparations to the period after the conclusion of a “formal peace treaty.” The London moratorium was established in 1990 by the “Two Plus Four Treaty” pointless. The States of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – including Greece – voted 1990 “Charter of Paris” for a new peaceful order in Europe

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• According to Berlin resulting from the approval of the” final settlement with respect to Germany “in the Charter, that the reparations should not be regulated. In Athens, it is argued, however, the compensation issue was unclear because the signatories have taken the contract for information only.

• , 2003, the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) Receivables from because of an SS massacre in Distomo 1944. Claims of survivors could be derived neither from international law nor from German official liability law. 2006 confirmed the Federal Constitutional Court that view and took a lawsuit by four Greeks to decide on.

• A Greek court awarded 1997 descendants of the victims to just under 29 million euros. But according to BGH judgment is contrary to the international law principle of sovereign immunity. After that a state may not sit in judgment over another. This principle had 2002, the European Court of Human Rights and – confirmed the Supreme Special Court of Greece – in a similar case. Thus the Greek judgment in Germany has no legal force, was the Supreme Court.

• In the past two years have charged experts of the Greek Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank in Athens the amount of reparations from the Greek point of view. In a study that had the Greek Sunday newspaper “To Vima” published in March, the total claims were estimated at 269-332 billion euros. The Greek deputy finance Dimitris Mardas called on March 6 in a speech to parliament after a first evaluation of the relevant parliamentary committee, a total of 278.7 billion euros.

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  Germany agreed to reparations for Nazi injustice in the late 1950s compensation agreements with twelve countries. Athens got 1960 reparations amounting to 115 million German marks. Already in this contract shall be according to the German Government stated that the restitution was finally regulated. But Greek politicians demanded reparations continue. 2014 demand for compensation and the Athens-visit of President Joachim Gauck was loud. The federal government rejected the claim. Athens claims were regulated, it is to this day.

The two have a long time to them ever talked. When Merkel came in April 2014. Athens to visit the then Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Tsipras called for mass demonstrations against the Chancellor and threatened: “We will give her an adequate reception”

The Greek reparation claims on Germany were already at that time one of the favorite topics of Alexis Tsipras: “Enough with the pleasantries, Mrs. Merkel, the hour of reckoning has come,” he said at a party meeting

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Tsipras did not hesitate as opposition leader also historically daring comparisons. Merkel overlay Europe with a “social Holocaust” and would make Greece “a German colony”. The German chancellor, so Tsipras, was “the sponsor of Euro-skepticism and the neo-Nazi threat.”

That was 2012, when the Greek crisis reached its peak. The German chancellor was then in the most unpopular politician Hellas: Almost 84 percent of Greeks, so a survey had a poor opinion of Merkel. Many accused the “iron chancellor” before, she had plunged the country with her initial hesitation at the auxiliary loans only really in the crisis and now driving people with new austerity diktats even deeper into misery.

The positions in the debt dispute

• – the privatization of public operations
  – a fundamental reform of the pension system and the reduction of pensions
  – the increase in value-added taxes in two stages

• – the end of the MWS-preferential treatment for the tourist islands

  – an increase in the VAT rate on energy by ten percent
  – the dismantling of employee protection, in particular the opening of collective agreements and wage cuts

• – a primary surplus (excluding interest on debt) in 2015 budget of 1.0 percent of GDP, after earlier in 2015 a primary surplus of 3, 0 percent and has even been calls for 2016 and 2017 were 4.5 per cent, in order to reduce the public debt ratio by 2020 from 180 percent to 124 percent of GDP

• – a merger of the pension funds and the abolition of early retirement, but no general reduction of shortened already by 40 percent pensions
  – a primary surplus in 2015 of 0.75 per cent of GDP after Athens previously even been is said to have offered 1.0 percent

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  – a three-tier tax with rates of 7, 13 and 23 percent
  – a limited privatization of state enterprises

• – to preserve tax breaks for the Aegean Islands as possible
  – there should be no other longer term give solution, the extension of the current rescue program until March 2016

• – the reallocation of unused 10.9 billion euros from the program the recapitalization of banks
  for fiscal consolidation – the apportionment of in the coming years maturing bonds of Greece to the ECB on the rescue fund ESM and the coupling of there from 2021 interest and principal payments to the growth

“It must hurt,” have the Chancellor told him 2010 in the first negotiations on the bailout program, later reported the then Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou , Whether that’s true or not, it confirmed anyway the cherished by many Greeks suspected that hardhearted Merkel wants to punish them.

The German Chancellor was when it in Athens and other Greek cities almost daily mass protests against the austerity gave, a permanent, involuntary guest of the rallies: On billboards showed protesters Merkel with Hitler-mustache and in SS uniform.

More than once went Merkel dolls also in flames. The loudest then hooted the followers of Tsipras’ Syriza. Greek cartoonist recorded the Chancellor as sadistic taskmaster than bloodsucking vampire and as Zirkusdompteuse, the Greek pensioners drive with a curved stick to jump through a burning hoop – together with her walker.

Tsipras then orchestrated the anti-German sentiment. His predecessor Samaras and his ministers he derided as “Remember lists” which transpose directives Berlin. Tsipras said in those years of the Chancellor with relish as “Madame” Merkel – the French word you like in Greece associated with the red-light scene

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