BERLIN: Germany’s finance minister said he couldn’t rule out a Greek default, a stance that will add pressure on Athens as negotiations over much-needed financing enter their final stretch.
Asked whether he would repeat an assurance he gave in late 2012 that Greece wouldn’t default, Wolfgang Schäuble told The Wall Street Journal and French daily Les Echos that “I would have to think very hard before repeating this in the current situation.”
The sovereign, democratic decision of the Greek people has left us in a very different situation,” he said, referring to the January election that delivered a radical-left government that has vowed to reverse five years of creditor-mandated austerity and painful economic overhauls.
In an interview in his spartan Berlin office on Tuesday, Mr. Schäuble, a key architect of Europe’s controversial austerity-driven response to the eurozone debt crisis, showed no willingness to compromise in the negotiations to unlock the final installment of Greece’s €245 billion ($272 billion) bailout. Without a deal, the program will expire in six weeks, leaving Greece with no option but to default on billions of euros in debt repayments coming due this summer.
