BERLIN (MNI) – One day ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
trip to Athens, the German government insisted on Monday that Greece
meets the timetable for the reform and budget consolidation measures
agreed with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
The memorandum of understanding with the EU and the IMF “must be
implemented,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a
regular government press conference here. “The memorandum includes also
timetables,” he stressed.
Merkel will meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Tuesday
for talks in Athens. Samaras warned in an interview with German business
daily Handelsblatt on Friday that Greece would run out of money by the
end of next month if it did not receive the next aid tranche from its
European creditors.
European Central Bank Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen, a
German national, said in a newspaper interview published Sunday that the
ECB cannot extend the maturities or lower the interest rate on the Greek
sovereign debt it is holding.
Giving Greece more time to meet its reform and budget consolidation
goals “automatically means that Greece needs more financial assistance
from abroad,” Asmussen noted. This extra funding would need to come from
the other Eurozone states, he said.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@mni-news.com
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