THE GERMAN chancellor has said Greece and other southern European recipients of EU bailouts will have to get used to working longer and taking fewer holidays.
The German leader’s remarks, dismissed as populist by her critics, come as she braces herself for battle with the Bild tabloid over the creation of a permanent euro zone rescue fund, ESM.
As talks enter their final stages on the ESM, highly unpopular in Germany, Dr Merkel finds herself trapped between competing contradictory demands of the Bundestag and the European Central Bank. For now, though, Bild is Dr Merkel’s biggest problem. It has warned its eight million readers that her government has signed Germany up to a “secret” pact that will cost them €190 billion.
“We can’t have a common currency where some get lots of vacation time and others very little,” she told party supporters.
“That won’t work in the long term. It’s important that people in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are not able to retire earlier than in Germany, that everyone exerts themselves more or less equally. That is important.”
Her remarks were challenged by the opposition. OECD figures show that Greeks retire officially at 57 but on average at 61.9. Germans, meanwhile, have an official retirement age of 65 but retire on average at 61.8. Eurostat figures from 2006 show Germans work 33.5 years on average while Greeks work 29.9 years, the shortest in the EU.
Dr Merkel’s officials hit back at claims that Germany had signed a blank cheque for the ESM fund. Germany will contribute €22 billion in cash to the total ESM capital of €700 billion. It will also provide guarantees of €168 billion, only to be used in a worst-case scenario.
