Time and Money Grow Short as Greece and Germany Seek Concensus on Debt

With time running ever shorter for an accord to ease Greece’s debt crisis and cash crunch, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met on Monday and sought at least to take the sting out of venomous exchanges between Athens and Berlin in recent weeks.

After an hour of talks, the two leaders were guarded at a news conference, and indicated no breakthrough in resolving Greece’s debt troubles or its increasingly contentious negotiations with its European Union partners, who are demanding fresh reforms before offering more money to Athens.

While talks over those difficult issues are certain to continue for weeks, the meeting Monday was more notable for the attempt by the two leaders to lower the temperature of the public sparring between Greece and Germany, respectively Europe’s most troubled economy and its strongest.

Ms. Merkel received Mr. Tsipras with military honors, and the two leaders were to continue their discussions over dinner. But their public interplay, at least, was characterized at times by smiles and a measure of warmth that has been notably absent as Greece’s crisis has intensified, with Athens warning that without further relief in coming weeks it will be unable to pay its bills.

“It should be really important that our work is marked by trust,” said Ms. Merkel, who at 60 is 20 years older than the Greek leader. Mr. Tsipras, tieless as usual, noted that when Ms. Merkel called to invite him to Berlin, she had stressed that “it is better to talk with each other than about each other.”

“We must define common ground,” Mr. Tsipras said, “And we must speak the language of truth and openly discuss our different opinions.”

Four weeks after undertaking to do so, Athens has yet to present a list of detailed reforms that it would carry out to get the next installment of credit from its three main creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, which is acting on behalf of the 18 other members of the eurozone.

The Greek failure to present clear demands has infuriated many Germans, with public opinion polls showing emotions rising against further rescue. In financial markets, analysts have talked more openly of the rising threat of a Greek exit, accidental or not, from the euro, although most still consider this unlikely.

Mr. Tsipras wrote to Ms. Merkel on March 15 highlighting Greece’s looming cash crunch, the Greek government spokesman, Gavriil Sakellaridis, told Greek television on Monday. He said the letter had also been sent to other European leaders, including President François Hollande of France and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.

The letter, first reported by The Financial Times, prompted a three-hour, late-night meeting last week in Brussels between Mr. Tsipras and the German, French and European leaders, Mr. Sakellaridis said. 

Mr. Tsipras “was listened to” in Brussels, he said, adding that Athens was not joking when it said it would soon face a stark choice between paying state salaries and pensions or paying creditors.

“It’s not a threat, it’s reality,” Mr. Sakellaridis said.

Ms. Merkel emphasized that Germany, while important, cannot speak for the other nations in the eurozone and thus no binding agreements on Greece’s debt could be expected Monday night.

But it was clear that she and Mr. Tsipras recognized the need to ratchet down the emotions — about Nazi war crimes in Greece, or stereotypes of “lazy Greeks” or mean Germans, as the Greek leader put it — and that their respective voters needed to see them do this together.

Some Germans may have lost sight of the horror of Nazi occupation in Greece, Ms. Merkel noted. At least 80,000 Greeks were killed by the Germans. For his part, Mr. Tsipras said that a forced loan to the Nazis in 1942, is an ethical, moral issue, which he plainly regards as outstanding, while the current German government said it considered the reparations issue closed.

Most important, both leaders said, stereotypes should be abandoned. “Europe is built on the idea that each country is as important as the other,” Ms. Merkel said with some passion. “Everyone has one vote and that is what characterizes our peaceful life together in Europe.”

Since the start of the Greek crisis almost five years ago, she noted, she had opposed talk of “the Italians, the Greeks, the Irish or the Germans.” Making sweeping collective judgments “is exactly what Europe is not,” she said. “And I am moved by this idea when I make politics. This is such a precious thing that we must make every effort to nurture it well in future.”

Mr. Tsipras said of the talks so far: “I must say that the Chancellor listens and would like to make constructive progress.”

Verbal hostilities between Greece and Germany mounted in recent weeks, with particular bitterness lacing the remarks of each country’s finance ministers. Last week, a controversy swirled over whether the Greek minister, Yanis Varoufakis, had made a provocative one-fingered gesture at Germany at a conference in Croatia two years ago.

More gravely, the question of whether Germany should pay more reparations to Greece for Nazi war crimes and forced loans has flared, with some leading figures on the German left ready to consider such payments.

The magazine Der Spiegel summed it all up with a cover this week superimposing a picture of Ms. Merkel on an old photograph of Nazi commanders at the Parthenon in Athens under the headline, “The German Übermacht.” In an accompanying article, it argued that fellow Europeans increasingly see Germany, which is Europe’s biggest economy, and its leaders as dominant. “Yet they are rather a weak than a strong hegemon,” Der Spiegel said of the Germans.

Mr. Tsipras went out of his way to say that he found the cover “very unfair, unfair to the Chancellor and to the German people.” He was just as irritated, he said, by cartoons in publications of his political party, Syriza, that caricatured Germans as Nazis.

“You cannot joke with history,” he said. “The dark past — we must overcome.”

In a blow to hard-pressed Greek banks, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said on Monday that Greece had not yet met conditions that would allow its debt to again be used to secure central bank loans.

Mr. Draghi bristled at accusations by one member of Parliament that the central bank was blackmailing Greece. He suggested it was the other way around. The European Central Bank’s credit to Greece has more than doubled since December to 104 billion euros, or about $113 billion, he said.

“Are we blackmailing Greece?” Mr. Draghi said. “It’s a bit rich when you look at our exposure to Greece.”