Germany’s Schaeuble says differences with Greece remain
Germany and Greece are still some distance apart on a possible compromise between Greece and its creditors to keep the country from default, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday, a day after he met his Greek counterpart in Berlin.
Schaeuble told a conference organised by his conservative
CDU party in Berlin that his working relations with Yanis Varoufakis were ‘OK’, adding however that he was “hard work”.
“We were together yesterday… we had differing views,” said Schaeuble.
Greece has handed its creditors new proposals on unlocking funds to prevent his country going bankrupt, with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressing hope for a deal and warning that the cost of failure would be enormous.
Schaeuble was not asked about these plans, but some European officials said the proposals were insufficient to get a deal.
Both Schaeuble and Finnish Finance Minister Alexander Stubb reiterated that the ball was in Greece’s court to deliver reforms to free up the cash Athens will need by the end of June.
“We will do everything to keep Greece in the euro zone,” said Stubb, adding however that some finance ministers were starting to lose patience.
“In the last four or five years we have done everything in our power to keep Greece in the euro zone but this is a two-way street,” he said, adding that the risk of contagion from a possible Grexit was not as great as it was a few years ago.
Both Schaeuble and Stubb have taken a tough line towards Athens in debt talks over the last few years.
Schaeuble also denied media reports that a rift had emerged between him and his boss, Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Greece.
“You shouldn’t waste much time on these rumours,” Schaeuble told the conference.
German media reported that Schaeuble had been upset by a surprise meeting in Berlin last week between Merkel and Greece’s international creditor institutions and that he was worried about a softening of Germany’s tough stance towards Greece. [Reuters]
