Financial Aid Package for Greece Would Put Chancellor Merkel’s Coalition at Risk

TV Interview with Almut Möller
05.03.2010 | BBC World

“A decision to bail out Greece would put domestic pressure on Chancellor Merkel’s coalition government”, said Almut Möller, the Head of the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies at the German Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview with the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg. Provoked by the German media, the atmosphere in the public was almost hostile when the Greek Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou visited Berlin. In the joint press conference Chancellor Merkel made an attempt to calm down the situation by insisting on her mantra that Greece had not asked for financial support yet and that therefore there would not be any financial guarantees. “Merkel tried to summon the spirit of the European integration project by bringing up the term ‘solidarity’ several times”, Möller said. In a short term perspective she had managed to ease the pressure on her government.

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