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Reuters
By Noah Barkin and Gernot Heller
June 14 2012
In early October of last year, German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler landed in Athens on a plane packed full of corporate executives, carrying a message of hope.
Germany and its leading firms, the young minister told Greek leaders, stood ready to help Greece overcome the debt crisis that had plunged its economy into recession and pushed it to the brink of its second EU/IMF rescue in little more than a year.
The mood in the meetings that followed was described by German officials who participated as "euphoric". Roesler received assurances that commercial disputes with German firms would be resolved. As soon as they were, Roesler promised, German investments would flow, focused on Greece's solar sector.
Yet within weeks the relationship had sunk to a postwar low. From interviews with German and European officials, Reuters has traced how and why trust broke down, with grave implications for
Greece and Europe's single currency project.
"The minister was held up as a messiah who would save Greece," said a senior German official who travelled with Roesler and sat in on the meetings. By the time Roesler boarded his plane back to Berlin, he and his Greek counterpart Mihalis Chrysohoidis were using the familiar "du" and "esy".
Just weeks after Roesler's visit, Greece's then Prime Minister George Papandreou shocked his European partners by announcing plans - swiftly reversed - for a referendum on Greece's new 130 billion euro bailout package.
That gambit, a half dozen senior German officials told Reuters, marked the start of a dizzying deterioration in ties between Berlin and Athens, characterized by misunderstandings, broken promises and highly unusual public attacks.
A little more than half a year later, with Greece poised for an election that could determine whether it stays in the euro or returns to the drachma, the level of frustration in Berlin with the country's entrenched political class is sky high and its confidence that Athens can get back on track abysmally low.
German officials, many speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue before Sunday's vote, speak of a broken Greek bureaucracy incapable of implementing decisions taken at the top. A drive to root out corruption and tax-dodging has largely failed, they say.
Looking back, however, some German officials also acknowledge that Greece's descent into disarray, and the resulting risks for the broader
euro zone, cannot be blamed on the Greeks alone.
It is also a story of neglect by Greece's European partners, they say, including Germany, which reluctantly bailed out Greece over two years ago, but then proceeded to ignore it until late 2011, when its dire economy, unstable politics and abysmal finances forced it back onto the agenda.
Roesler's trip came nearly a year-and-a-half after Germany bankrolled an initial rescue for Greece. Yet that still made him the first member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet to visit the country since the rescue.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has not been to Greece in three years and European Council President Herman van Rompuy visited once in April 2011, a year after the rescue, their aides confirmed.
"For a year after the first bailout, neither Berlin nor Brussels made any symbolic political gestures towards Greece. No one travelled there to take stock of the situation for themselves," said Markus Kerber, chief executive of the BDI industry federation and a former
finance ministry official.
"There was a fundamental misunderstanding that this would end up with big countries like Spain and
Italy in the sights of the markets. They didn't realize that a single currency zone doesn't work on auto-pilot."
Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert vigorously denied Germany had ignored Greece, saying Berlin had closely followed the work of the so-called "troika" - the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - which was charged with monitoring the country's progress. He noted that Papandreou himself had praised Germany for its support and cooperation in meetings with Merkel in March 2010 and September 2011.
