Athens Angela Merkel has often wrestled with Greece and the Greeks in the past ten years, and probably also quarreled. The Greek debt crisis plunged the euro zone into severe turmoil. But that seems a long way off this Friday. Athens welcomes the outgoing Chancellor for a farewell visit with a cloudless sky and 19 degrees in late summer.
The welcoming words of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were as friendly as the weather: He paid tribute to the “political marathon” of “Dear Angela”, who had “done a lot for Germany and Europe” in 16 years of government.
How much stamina Merkel had and how quickly most Greek heads of government ran out of breath shows a figure that Mitsotakis mentions: he was already the eighth head of government that Merkel had to deal with in Athens, the prime minister said with a smile.
Angela Merkel and the Greeks: You can hardly imagine a more complicated relationship. The newspaper “Ta Nea” wrote on the occasion of the farewell visit of the “end of a difficult relationship”. For most people in Greece, Merkel’s image is shaped by her role in the debt crisis.
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At the time, the Chancellor was widely perceived as a hard-hearted savings commissioner. “It must hurt,” Merkel told him when the first aid package was put together in the spring of 2010 and a strict austerity program was imposed on the Greeks, remembers the Social Democratic Prime Minister at the time, Giorgos Papandreou. Today’s Prime Minister Mitsotakis believes that the austerity measures at the time “went far beyond what Greek society could endure”.
The past is omnipresent on this farewell visit. Before her appointment in the Villa Maximos, the official residence of the Prime Minister, Merkel met young Greeks on Friday morning at the Goethe-Institut in Athens. She is aware that she “demanded a lot” of the people in Greece during the debt crisis, said Merkel. In retrospect, it remains to be seen whether she is sorry.
The national debt ratio has meanwhile doubled
Greece has been standing on its own two feet again since 2018. Athens is refinancing itself on the capital markets at interest rates that are lower than ever since the introduction of the euro – an astonishing comeback for a country that was still on the brink of national bankruptcy in mid-2015. But the crisis is having an effect: the unemployment rate is 13.2 percent, the highest in the EU. The gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 was still 30 percent below the pre-crisis level of 2008.
The national debt ratio has almost doubled in the same period from 109 percent to 206 percent of GDP – also because Germany in 2010 shied away from an early debt haircut called for by many experts.
During the debt crisis, demonstrators set up a gallows on Syntagma Square in Athens, from which a Merkel doll was dangling. Greek newspapers showed the Chancellor in photomontages as an SS soldier. A cartoonist drew Merkel as a circus tamer who urged Greek pensioners to jump through a burning tire with a cracking whip.
These hateful images have now disappeared from the media. But how broken the relationship between the two peoples is from the Greek point of view, shows a survey from the beginning of October. Over 70 percent of the Greeks surveyed see France as a friend of their country. Only four percent of Germany say that.
Many Greeks feel abandoned by German policy on Turkey
This has not only to do with the austerity requirements during the crisis. Another reason for this lies in Germany’s policy on Turkey. It was one of the main topics of this farewell visit. Many people in Greece feel that the conflicts with Turkey, which is becoming more and more aggressive in the eastern Mediterranean, have been misunderstood and abandoned by Germany. Merkel is accused of being too close to the Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Chancellor said on the subject that she is relying on conflict resolution through dialogue, even if it “sometimes takes a little longer”. Mitsotakis assured that Greece is also looking to talk to Turkey: “Our door is always open.” However, Turkey is straining Greece’s patience “because it keeps crossing borders”.
Mitsotakis explicitly praised Merkel’s efforts to mediate between Athens and Ankara – a role that is often neglected in Greece: It was primarily thanks to Merkel’s mediation in the summer of 2020 at the height of the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean that Turkey withdrew its navy and returned to the negotiating table. In this way, the Chancellor was able to prevent the conflict over sovereign rights from turning into a military dispute.
It is possible that the unloved crisis manager Merkel will miss the Greeks in the future. It remains to be seen whether a future Chancellor Olaf Scholz will or can take on this role. In general, the end of the Merkel era, as much as some in Athens have longed for it, brings a lot of uncertainty for the Greeks. The German Social Democrats in Greece feel that they are generally better understood. After all, SPD politicians were already advocating Eurobonds when the topic was still an absolute taboo in Berlin. Most people in Greece are also sympathetic to the Greens, especially because of their critical stance towards Turkey and German arms exports to Ankara.
It’s difficult with the FDP
It’s a lot more difficult with the FDP. Christian Lindner, who wanted to take the euro away from the Greeks at the height of the debt crisis, as a possible finance minister, is unlikely to be enthusiastic about the wishes of the southern EU states for a relaxation of the EU stability pact. This is a particularly hot topic for the Greek government – no wonder, given the astronomical national debt.
Merkel used her farewell visit to Athens once again to commit to the Stability Pact. The outgoing Chancellor warned that difficulties would not be solved by simply throwing him overboard. Incidentally, the flexibility of the pact is “not so small,” said Merkel. The problem is more that in the good years some euro countries did not manage well, said the Chancellor.
More: Plus only 1.8 percent: Why Germany is currently being left behind from the rest of Europe.