During her visit to Athens, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has made it the responsibility of Germany for the Nazi crimes in Greece. “We know how much suffering Germany brought in the time of national socialism on Greece,” Merkel said on Friday in Athens. Germany was aware of its historical responsibility.
As a lesson learned, Germany was doing everything to maintain good relations with Greece and to support each other in the interest of both countries, said Merkel. The Chancellor, among others, the Greek President Prokopis met on Friday in Athens, Pavlopoulos to a conversation. At the tomb of the unknown soldier in Athens, laid a wreath.
In Greece, had been raised in the past few years, demands for German compensation payments for the crimes committed during the occupation by the Nazis (1941-1944). By the debt crisis in Greece, which was the German-Greek relations on the sample, were fired up these claims. The Greek court of auditors has calculated that the reparations claims in the past to 162 billion euros.
In contrast to Greece, Germany, the requirement for compensation payments by agreement of 1960 and through the Two-plus-Four agreement of 1990 as a legally settled. The then Federal President, Joachim Gauck, had apologized in 2014, during a visit to Greece but to German war crimes.
Greece’s mountain of debt had made the Greek-German relations in the past few years, a tough test. The imposed by the international creditors reduction programs in return for a three-credit packages that plunged Greece into crisis. Many Greeks saw Merkel as a main responsible for the strict austerity conditions.
unlike previous Visits it was not this time, although the big demonstrations against the Chancellor. On Thursday evening, there were in Athens, but violent clashes between protesters and police during protests against Merkel’s visit. In a conversation with the Greek head of government Alexis Tsipras, Merkel praised on Thursday evening, the victim would have supplied the Greeks during the financial crisis.
More about
Chancellor in Greece, Merkel’s difficult Mission
Sarantis Michalopoulos
FDP-Chef Christian Lindner warned, meanwhile, of further financial aid to Athens. Solidarity should remain “strictly against performance bound,” he said of the “Passauer Neue Presse”. In the area of privatisation and market opening in Greece have again lost a year, the alignment of VAT at the EU-level had been cancelled. (AFP)
