What if the Greek government tries to get together a ‘national negotiation team’. What if Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is willing to go to Brussels together with his coalition partners Evangelos Venizelos (PASOK) and Fotis Kouvelis (Democratic Left) and renegotiate the bailout programme face to face with Greece’s lenders. Athens is reportedly to ask two years of ‘mercy time’ (see: extension) to meet deficit goals.
But here comes German Chancellor Angela Merkel and cuts the wings of flying-high politicians. An extension of two years is “fully unacceptable” Merkel said and demonstrated willingness of “just a couple of weeks”.
Greece is not Spain, right? Right, therefore the German CDU/FDP coalition is not so crabbed as it is about Greece…
Merkel To Allow Greece A Few Weeks Extra Time
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is willing to allow Greece extra time to meet its deficit goals of at most a couple of weeks, the German daily Rheinische Post reported Friday, citing government sources.
The Greek government, however, announced on Thursday that it is seeking a postponement of the deficit goals of at least two years.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular press conference on Friday that Greece needs to stick to “the content and timetable” set in the memorandum of understanding agreed with its international lenders.
Seibert reaffirmed that the German government is determined to stabilize Greece inside the Eurozone, although it will be a long road for Greece to get its economy and budget back in shape again.
According to Rheinische Post, the preliminary report on Greece by the EU Commission, ECB and IMF shows that the country has missed 210 out of more than 300 concrete demands for fiscal consolidation. (Marketnews, German Welt Online )
What??? Greece missed 210 out of 300 troika demands for fiscal consolidation? That’s much more than one should have expected 🙂
PS As the term “a couple of weeks” does not mean more than 6 weeks, it would be better if the Greek government drops the renegotiation plans. Otherwise for the rest of our lives we’ll keep hearing the German side claiming “We gave you time”.
But 2 years is a couple of weeks, isn’t it? I think it is time to get this linguistic nightmare in the EU sorted, once and for all, so that we all know what things mean and sing from the same hymn sheet so to speak.
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.
In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where! more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
Ja?
perphekt! ze ph… sivil servads wil sur jump wiz joy – or I got it wrong?
Urop vil b prod of u!
phinaly!
Ha, ha, ha!!! You are so funny! I think it is sad if they really will do this. At least in North America English won’t be changed in such a way.
Zis plan sunds gud to me! Less “anglo”, mor “saxon”, plis!
😀
plis or pils?
That’s a rhetorical question, kt. Ein Pils, bitte!
😀
I’d go for a Pils too, plis 🙂
Bot, plenti! Ze onli zing zat ve vill everrr agre on. pils, Satzenbrau special.