Tsakalotos to meet Scholz in Berlin on Friday for talks on debt

Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos is due in Berlin on Friday for talks with his German counterpart Olaf Scholz that are expected to focus on Greek reform efforts and the prospects for lightening the country's debt burden.
Debt relief for Greece is an issue that has provoked divisions in the new German government.
Last week, the financial council of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU) launched an attack against Scholz, who belongs to Germany's Social Democrat party, and against Greece's leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
The council, effectively an association of 12,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, said Greece will only regain its competitiveness by devaluing its currency, which would require an exit from the eurozone.