DW — On his final international tour as US president, Barack Obama has advocated for debt relief for Greece. The Greek prime minister is counting on Obama to deliver that message to Chancellor Angela Merkel later this week.
US President Barack Obama told journalists in Greece Tuesday that debt relief will be needed if the Athens government is to get the country’s economy back on solid ground.
And Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he was confident the US president would effectively deliver that message to Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders later this week when he arrives in Germany.
“In my message to the rest of Europe I will continue to emphasize our view that austerity alone cannot deliver prosperity,” Obama told Tsipras.
Many European Union (EU) leaders are wary of granting Greece debt relief because they fear it will set a bad precedent – emboldening leaders in other poorer EU countries to engage in reckless budget management with the knowledge that the broader EU community will bail them out if it all goes bad.
Merkel in particular has been an outspoken advocate for austerity, which Greece has undertaken. But there is a growing chorus, which includes the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that austerity alone will not solve the country’s economic crisis.
