Merkel said on Monday she could recommend “with full confidence” that the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany’s parliament, authorise the opening of loan negotiations once the Greek parliament has approved the entire programme and passed the first laws.
Advertisement
“Leaders threatened to leave”, the source said, with Merkel and Hollande’s counterparts stuck staring at the walls of their delegation rooms waiting for news to emerge from the big guns. Greece can reschedule its debt under the deal but is not entitled to debt relief.
The Left Party deputy leaders Sahra Wagenknecht and Dietmar Bartsch criticized Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, for – they say – ignoring the democratic will of the Greek people and delivering a program, which they depicted as a “fatal poisonous cocktail of austerity policies”.
Around 30 conservative deputies voted “No” on a previous Greece rescue package last February and around 100 more said they would go no further.
After months of deadlines that turned out not to matter and final demands that weren’t met, the threat of a one-way ticket from the euro seems to have finally persuaded Greece to capitulate to its creditors.
A rebellion of this dimension would represent a severe blow to her political authority. Now, it looks as if he’ll have to sell his electorate an even more demanding deal than the nation’s voters recently rejected.
The Greek vote was “a slap in the face for all Europeans”, said the Federation of German Industry, with Germany’s powerful business sector having argued that Greece’s euro membership could be sacrificed for the sake of a stable currency. Agreeing on a new deal would take about four weeks, he said.
ATHENS, GREECE: A bailout proposal eurozone countries hammered out for Greece has sparked a trending Twitter hashtag, #ThisIsACoup, for containing harsh terms seen as stripping Athens of its fiscal sovereignty.
This deal, of course, could still unravel.
Advertisement
Athens and many of its Balkan neighbours have also emerged as a target for Russian President Vladimir Putin to promote instability and to pile on the pressure on Europe, adding to worries in the USA about the Greek crisis.
