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tagged: assigned Deputy Minister for Greece, Germany, Greece, Greek-German Friendship Assembly, Hans Joachim Fuchtel, ThessalonikiH-J Fuchtel: German MP Assigned Deputy Minister for …Greece!?
Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Economy
Hans Hoachim Fuchtel is a member Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party (CDU) at the German Parliament and Deputy Labour Minister. Now he got appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel as Undersecretary for promoting and monitoring programmes to be financed by EU funds, which have not been disbursed by Greece. According to daily TA NEA, Fuchtel will represent the “Greek-German Representative Assembly” [I have no idea what it is...] and his mandate is to revive the Greek-German friendship and cooperation based on specific objectives.
His base is Greece will be Thessaloniki, in the north of the country, and the German Consulate will play a coordinating role. Fuchtel will give special emphasis and provide expertise for the absorption of the funds from the EU.
Speaking to members of the Greek-German Friendship who visited Berlin, Fuchtel said that there are currently over 100 EU-funded projects for Greece for immediate implementation and worth €16 billion that cannot be disbursed due to lack of specific studies.
Fuchtel stressed that these 16-billion-euro projects could help Greece to cope with the crisis. The projects focus on infrastructure, seweage processing and tourism.
A new impetus is designed to be given to the institution of the town twinning which is expected to extend from the exchange of culture to cooperation in practical terms for the implementation of infrastructure projects. There are currently about 30 twinning cities between Germany and Greece.
Apart from EU-Funds aid and city twinning, the German Finance Ministry plans to finance programmes for research institutions. The German FinMin will grant 2 million euro to the research institutions of the German political parties such as the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of CDU and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation of SPD. The Foundations will be expected to run research programmes in Greece.
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No matter how “selfless” Germany’s motives are, the Greek press and news portals seem to look at Fuchtel’s appointment with a kind of disdain. TA NEA, and some news portals (newsit.gr) entitle the relevant report as : Greece gets its own German Deputy Minister. Some go even ho so far to call Fuchtel “Germany’s controller for Greece” (news247.gr). Daily Proto Thema speaks of Fuchtel as the “Lord of EU-Funds” and entitles the article “In the years of Otto” reminding its readers of the practices in 1832 when German Otto, Prince of Bavaria, was made King of Greece under the protection of the Great Powers (United Kingdom, Russian Empire and France).
H-J Fuchtel is from Baden-Württemberg in SW of Germany though and not from SE of the country as Otto was 
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The Greek press is just as sickening as Bild or Focus. Instead of looking why those 16 BILLION euro in subsidies (and I think it is even more!) can not be absorbed by the Greek state apparatus amd administration and lambasting that fact, they get into these ‘games’. Yes, it is way easier than to do something about once own failings. I have to say that I am feeling almost ashamed that Greece can not do all these ‘simple’ things by themselves and has shown that it needs, like a third world country foreign officials to do it for us. It is so humiliating!
No instead I had to read this a couple of days ago:
So, not only are there still mountains of red tape, and this example is just one of many, but the cost of obtaining these licenses have gone up also. When they should come down to stimulate all those hundreds of thousands newly unemployed to go an start something new.
I said “simple things”. And of course the EU-subsidy carousel is anything BUT simple. I could have been set up by the Greek civil service
But I also know enough people in Greece who have dealt with these things when they were living in other countries. And they managed very well. So why not use that potential to get the whole process going?
If these are EU funds, rather than specifically German ones, then how come we get a German representative, appointed by none other than Angela Merkel, to monitor these programmes?
This seems to me like a way for Germany to recycle EU funds back to herself through the intermediary of Greece. It’d be very interesting to find out which companies are assigned the funds.
hehe! you got it!
[...] της Ελληνογερμανικής Συνέλευσης» και μάλιστα με έδρα την Θεσσαλονίκη (επιτέλους γίναμε πρωτεύουσα). Από την ίδια πηγή [...]
Hi,
I am an avid follower of KTG since it helps me a lot as a non Greek speaking Athens resident to stay tuned on current events. Keep going !
As per this German guy, I must say that it is quit symptomatic of what I have read recently from German, French, British and even (yes !) Italian press : no one in Europe is willing to trust the Greeks with money anymore. So if we want cash (and for sure some investments would probably help since austerity is not exactly knwown as a fantastic growth booster), we now have to go through some begging process and face lots of raised eyebrows. I am not so sure the Germans are to blame for that.