The radical Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, will meet the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Monday amid strained relationships between the two countries over Germany’s hardline stance on Greece’s debt crisis.
A senior figure in Merkel’s junior coalition partner called on Tsipras to present a firm list of reforms at his meeting with Merkel, on his first official visit to Germany since his election.
“I want to see if Greece is finally prepared to make real reforms or not,” said Thomas Oppermann, parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats.
“Tsipras announced he would present a complete list of precise reforms,” Oppermann said in an interview in Der Spiegel. “I expect him to present this list during his conversation with chancellor Merkel on Monday.”
Tsipras has blamed Merkel’s insistence on tough austerity for his country’s “humanitarian crisis” of poverty and mass unemployment.
Merkel, for her part, maintains that if cash-strapped Greece wants more international bailout loans, of which Germany stumps up the biggest share, it must accept the bitter medicine of cuts and reforms.
Speaking to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini before the visit, Tsipras said the meeting with Merkel would be an opportunity to talk “without the pressure of any negotiation”, adding: “It’s important because we will be able to talk about topics which are damaging Europe, and about how to improve relations between our two countries.”
The row between the two countries has dominated the German media over the past week, exacerbated by the broadcast last Sunday of a two-year-old video showing the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, apparently raising his middle finger to Germany.
“Tsipras has to recognise that the zig-zag manoeuvring of finance minister Varoufakis has damaged his government in Europe,” Oppermann added.
Asked what he expected from Merkel during the meeting, he said, “It’s Tsipras’ move now, not Merkel’s.”
Der Spiegel’s latest cover reflects the mood of confrontation. Beneath the headline, How Europeans see Germans - the German supremacy, the magazine printed an image of senior Nazi officers next to the Parthenon in occupied Athens during the second world war with Merkel standing among them smiling.
Germany’s opposition leaders have taken a more conciliatory stance, with the Green party chairwoman, Simone Peters, calling on both Merkel and Tsipras to “get over the primitive rhetoric of the past weeks and give German-Greek relations a new chance”.
“A social reform course from the Greeks must find the support of the government as much as reviving sustainable investments and the relief of Greece’s oppressive debt burden,” she told German news agency DPA.
AFP contributed to this report
