No German money for Athens' bottomless pit

Berlin: Germany will not "pour money into a bottomless pit" and patience with Greece is growing thin ahead of a new election in the Mediterranean country, a conservative member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet was quoted yesterday as saying.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper that Germany, Europe's largest economy and the biggest contributor to rescue efforts, is glad to help Greece help itself but expects it to honour its agreements.

"We're not willing to pour money into a bottomless pit," he told the newspaper.

"Anyone who wants to see help and solidarity from us has to accept that we expect from that country a certain amount of seriousness and a certain amount of reasonableness."

Friedrich, who has long been a hardliner in Merkel's cabinet on Greece, became the first German minister in February to openly call for the country to leave the Eurozone. While his latest comments appear to be aimed at placating Germans who are increasingly anxious about the Greek situation, they are likely to reopen old wounds with Athens.

Villanised

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also called Greece "a bottomless pit" in February but after being villanised in Athens has since refrained from using the term.

Greece was forced to call a repeat election for June 17 after a May 6 vote left parliament divided between parties that support and oppose austerity conditions attached to a €130 billion (Dh477.5 billion) bailout package agreed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund in March.

Anti-bailout parties are expected to repeat their strong performance, opinion polls show, increasing the risk Greece will renege on its austerity pledges, default on its debt and possibly leave the single currency.

Merkel and European Union leaders said at a summit this week they want to keep Greece in the Eurozone. But sources said the Eurogroup Working Group — experts who work for the bloc's finance ministers — had told member states to begin making contingency plans for a Greece exit.

Juergen Fitschen, the designated co-chief executive of Germany's largest commercial bank, Deutsche Bank, was quoted in online editions of German newspapers on Friday calling Greece a "failed state".

"Greece is the only country that we can in my view call a failed state," he said. "It's a corrupt state, its political leadership is corrupt."

Friedrich, a leader in the arch-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) that is the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), said Greece made a mistake assuming joining the euro would give the country prosperity.

Public opinion turning

"[They] evidently believed wealth would be automatic if they got their hands on the euro," Friedrich said.

"A country needs a currency that matches its economic strength".

Public opinion in Germany is turning against Greece staying in the Eurozone. A Politbarometer poll by ZDF TV published on Friday showed only 31 per cent want Greece to stay with 60 per cent opposed. In a similar ZDF poll in November, 41 per cent wanted Greece to stay and 49 per cent wanted to see it leave.