BERLIN (MNI) – Greece will be granted at most a couple of months
more time to meet its fiscal and reform goals but not the two years
desired by Athens, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
CDU/CSU-FDP government coalition said Wednesday.
“One can talk about a few weeks or maybe a couple of months but
surely not about a delay of two years,” FDP parliamentary leader Rainer
Bruederle, a former Economics Minister, told German ZDF public
television.
“There will be no majority in the Bundestag [Germany's lower house]
for additional aid for Greece” beyond that already agreed, Bruederle
stressed. Moreover, if Greece doesn’t adhere to the fiscal and reform
goals agreed with its Eurozone peers and the IMF, even the already
agreed fiscal aid won’t be paid out any further, he added.
Bruederle said the Eurozone is now better prepared for a Greek exit
from the Eurozone than two years ago when the debt crisis started.
Still, he acknowledged that this will “not be an easy story and will
also prompt significant turbulences.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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