German couple pays €875 to Greece for their share of WWII reparations
Nina Lahge, who works a 30-hour week, and Ludwig Zacaro, who is retired, made the symbolic gesture and explained that the amount of €875 would be the amount one person would owe if Germany’s entire war debt was divided by the population of 80 million Germans.A German couple visiting Greece have handed over a check for €875 to the mayor of the seaport town of Nafplio, saying they wanted to make amends for their government’s attitude for refusing to pay Second World War reparations.
“If we, the 80 million Germans, would have to pay the debts of our country to Greece, everyone would owe €875 euros. In [a] display of solidarity and as a symbolic move we wanted to return this money, the €875 euros, to the Greek population,” they said.
They apologized for not being able to afford to pay for both of them.
“We are ashamed of the arrogance, which our country and many of our fellow citizens show towards Greece,” they told local media in Nafplio, southern Greece.
The Greek people are not responsible for the fiasco of their previous governments, they believe.“Germany is the one owing to your country the World War II reparation money, part of which is also the forced loan of 1942,” they added.
The couple was referring to a loan which the Nazis forced the Greek central bank to give the Third Reich during the WWII thus ruining the occupied country’s economy.
The mayor of Nafplio, Dimitris Kotsouros, said the money had been donated to a local charity.
Greece’s new left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has brought up the issue of war reparations as a bargaining chip with Germany in negotiations with the Eurogroup over restructuring Greece’s massive debt. Athens is struggling with debts amounting to 175 percent of its annual economic output. Facing default and possible exit from the Eurozone, the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), known as the Troika, have bailed Greece out in return for tough austerity measures, which the Greeks say are becoming too much to bear.
Greece has claimed that Germany owes it money for the forced wartime loan for a long time, but this is something that most politicians in Berlin refute.
After unconditional surrender in 1945 Germany did not agree to clear up reparations, although then it was financially bankrupt, and at the time Greece, as well as many other countries, made no objections.
Although some legal experts believe Athens may have a case, Germany is widely seen as having tried to make amends for its Nazi past, a legacy that continues to shape its diplomacy.
“There’s no (justified) claim. The Greeks should do their (economic) homework and not seek culprits elsewhere,” Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of Merkel’s conservatives, told Ekathimerini, A Greek news website.
“I think at the end of the day, Greece will leave, there will be a so-called Grexit. I think it will be good for Greece, good for Europe because it will mean someone that takes a loss,” Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank, told RT.If, in the next 48 hours, Athens and Brussels fail to strike a bailout deal, Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone, and that might not be so bad after all.
Grexit: Win for both EU and Greece?
“I think at the end of the day, Greece will leave, there will be a so-called Grexit. I think it will be good for Greece, good for Europe because it will mean someone that takes a loss,” Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank, told RT.If, in the next 48 hours, Athens and Brussels fail to strike a bailout deal, Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone, and that might not be so bad after all.
The odds that Greece will leave the eurozone are 20 percent, Eurasia Group's European analyst Mujtaba Rahman told CNBC. Germany's Commerzbank has upped their estimate to 50 percent.
“You have to remember that these two sides are in a battle with no solution,” the Saxo Bank economist said, adding that there is no ‘win-win’ situation.
Greece and the EU have less than 48 hours to reach a new bailout deal, and neither side seems prepared to make concessions. Greece doesn’t want more austerity, but the new Syriza government also doesn’t want the country to retain its massive €316 billion debt.
“No solution is on the table unless someone gives up,” Jakobsen said, adding that no one wants to lose.
The threat of a ‘Grexit’- a scenario in which Greece leaves the eurozone- has been on the rise since the new Syriza government won the general election in late January. The party campaigned on the promise of ending the terms of austerity the previous governments agreed with a Troika of lenders- the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank.
“It’s not the Greek government or Greece that they are playing with, but Europe, and its future,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Wednesday.
Now, however, the banks are out of money, and the European Central Bank isn’t planning on dolling out more for free, but will charge high interest rates if banks, and the people of Greece, wants euro.
If Greece doesn’t accept what the EU offers - high interest loans - it will have to leave the euro and print its own currency to support Greek banks in desperate need of liquidity. This would put the country at a much greater risk of default, which is the reason it accepted EU aid in the first place.
“It will create short-term volatility in the marketplace… this is the beginning of something better for Greece and Europe,” Jakobsen said.
Doomed by Debt
Greece is buried in nearly €320 billion of debt. The EU came to Greece’s rescue in 2010 and 2014 with two bailouts totaling €240 billion, but not without any conditions.
Germany has warned no more disbursements will be released until Greece accepts the bailout terms.
Austerity measures, or less spending, have been the EU’s solution to fixing Greece’s heavily indebted economy.
Austerity measures, or less spending, have been the EU’s solution to fixing Greece’s heavily indebted economy.
The situation in Greece has become worse, not better, since the 2009 debt crisis, and only in 2014 began to show signs of economic growth after six years of recession.
In the last five years, the economy has lost a quarter of its value, and more than one in three Greeks live below the poverty line. Unemployment continues to hover near 30 percent, and nearly double for the young.
Syriza campaigned on the promise to end the EU bailout, and Germany, the biggest contributor to the bailout, as well as a number of other EU countries, want Greece to stand by the plan their predecessors agreed to.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has openly blamed Greece for its own failed banks, and has threatened the European Central Bank can switch off emergency funding.
“At the end of the day, Germany cannot go back to its voters and ask for money for a country that doesn’t even want to sign the legal document already embedded in the talks,” Jakobsen said.
In 1981, Greece became the tenth country to join the European Union, and less than 20 years later; it switched from the drachma to the new euro, which it now shares with 18 other countries.
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