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| Europe |
| Greece on collision course with Brussels after Merkel backs hardline debt stance |
| 2015-02-01 |
| [THEGUARDIAN] Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... has ruled out the prospect of Greece securing further debt cuts from its creditor nations, potentially putting the country's new leftist government on a collision course with Brussels. The German chancellor's uncompromising stance will not be welcomed in Athens, where the new ruling party, Syriza, insists that it will make good on its promises to halve the country's €320bn (£240bn) debt obligations and scrap a range of swingeing budget measures that were imposed in exchange for the loans. Athens is refusing to cooperate with the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund ‐ the troika of institutions overseeing the loans, which total about 175% of Greece's gross domestic product. Instead its new government is looking to meet with individual creditor nations as it seeks concessions that it claims are vital if Greece is to emerge from years of austerity. |
| Posted by:Fred |