GERMAN REACTION:AT FIRST glance it was a regular, sunny Sunday evening on Berlin's leafy Kurfürstendamm boulevard, outside the city's best-known Greek restaurant, "Ach! Niko Ach!" Sweating waiters juggled gyros, fish and ouzo on the terrace as usual but, as they cleared away plates, they threw nervous glances at the outdoor television.
While neighbouring restaurants were tuned to Euro 2012, the waiters here followed the Greek election results.
“Another stalemate would be the worst possible result,” said Karafillidis Dimitrios, the German-born Greek owner. “We’re hoping that [radical left leader Alexis] Tsipras doesn’t win.”
It was an indication of how important the chancellor Angela Merkel viewed the election that she postponed her departure for the G20 summit in Mexico until midnight to follow the first results.
On Saturday, Dr Merkel said bluntly that she will not allow Greece to “lead the EU around by the nose” and try to renegotiate its EU/IMF programme.
Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle was sent out to comment on the initial exit polls yesterday.
“We want that Greece sticks to the reform path and stays in the euro zone, but Greeks decide their own path and one cannot hold anyone who wants to go,” he said.
If a “pro-European government” was elected, he hinted, EU leaders would look again at the time frame to implement the programme – but without any renegotiation of its contents.
“If we allowed renegotiation for Greece we would not be credible with other countries that are fulfilling their programmes in exemplary fashion,” said Mr Westerwelle. “We cannot overburden Germany’s shoulders so much that everything collapses.” European Parliament president Martin Schulz said that, regardless of the election result, he did not expect the programme would be renegotiated.
“It’s not that we agreed the programme – €130 billion’s worth – because we wanted to torment the country, but because we want to help it,” he said. “Mr Tsipras has always left open a door. He says he wants a new programme but what he really wants is relief on the terms. I don’t think he is courageous enough to annul the programme – he wouldn’t find any coalition partner for that.”
Former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin suggested that “forces” in the EU wanted to prevent Greece from leaving the euro zone “at almost any price”.
“A successfully-managed Greek return to its own currency would show that there is life after the euro zone,” wrote Mr Sarrazin.
EU leaders are planning to meet on the fringes of the G20 summit to discuss the Greek poll result and the euro zone crisis. One new proposal on the table, according to yesterday’s Der Spiegel, is the idea of “eurobills” – short-term mutualised debt up to a limit of 10 per cent of a country’s gross domestic product.
The bills would generate up to €900 billion in liquidity for struggling euro zone members without creating any long-term mutualised debt risk for top-rated countries.
