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Greeks also voting on euro membership at polls: Schaeuble

21 May 2012, 10:09 CET
Greeks also voting on euro membership at polls: Schaeuble

Schaeuble - Venizelos - Photo EU Council

(ATHENS) - Greeks will not only be electing lawmakers in elections next month but voting on whether their country stays in the eurozone, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Sunday.

"Europe is ready to help the Greek people... But Europeans can't do the work of that Greece must do, that depends on the Greeks," he told the Sunday edition of Greek daily Kathimerini.

"Greek voters won't be voting only for a party next month. They will also vote on existential questions and it is important that their choice takes into everything into account," he added.

May 6 polls saw Greek anti-austerity parties gain ground, casting doubt on Athens' commitment to reforms and raising the question for its partners of whether to ease up on austerity or cut off rescue funds.

The latter course would almost certainly lead to a Greek default and exit from the eurozone, sparking global panic, and tensions are rising ahead of new polls June 17 which are not guaranteed to produce a viable government.

Schaeuble's comments follow a reported suggestion by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Greece hold a referendum on its euro membership alongside general elections next month.

Merkel's office has denied she made such a suggestion, but the German weekly Spiegel reports she did in fact propose to Athens that it hold a referendum.

Moreover, it said Schaeuble raised such an idea at the meeting of eurozone finance ministers last Monday, with a 'yes' vote signifying support for austerity measures which were accepted by Greece's previous government.

Such austerity measures, such as slashing the minimum wage and amending labour laws to facilitate layoffs in a country already grappling with an unemployment rate of over 20 percent, helped propel the leftist party Syriza to second place in the May 6 election.

Syriza called such measures "barbaric" and said they must be overturned immediately.

Schaeuble argued against any easing of the conditions attached to the Greece's second EU-IMF bailout of 237 billion euros ($300 billion).

"To tell the Greeks that they need not apply austerity deals to which they have agreed is to lie to them," he told the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

"And then structural reforms in Greece are necessary in any case, there's no more 'we'll muddle through as usual'," he added.

"European solidarity is not a one-way street," said the German minister said.


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