German press reports on this week’s working visit by Barack Obama to Athens and his repeated calls for Greek debt relief – always in tandem with structural reforms – mostly agree that Berlin will not be moved by the US president’s arguments, at least not before German federal elections in 2017.
Mass daily “Bild” was the most quoted dispatch, reporting that the “Obama visit brought nothing for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who hopes for a debt “haircut”, adding that Berlin dismissed such a prospect only after Obama’s plane departed Athens for Berlin.
To underline the point, the paper quoted an unnamed German chancellery source as saying that “what Tsipras and certain American diplomats are circulating is Athens’ usual propaganda … If we meet this request in the current phase and situation, the country (Greece) will again be at the edge in three years because in vital sectors nothing has changed”.
