Germany: Should the Greeks be rewarded?

“Drachmageddon” has been averted, said Paul Ronzheimer and Andreas Thewalt in Bild, “but europocalypse has not.” Our newspaper reminded the Greeks before this week’s parliamentary vote that their ATMs continue spewing out euros “only because we, the Germans, put them there.” If they wanted more bailout money, they couldn’t vote an “extreme-left or extreme-right idiot” into office. Fortunately, the warning was heeded. The next Greek government will be a coalition of the two sanest parties, the conservative New Democracy party and the socialist PASOK. But the markets are jittery, and many analysts think the euro is still in trouble.

That’s because the incoming government hardly inspires confidence, said Bettina Vestring in the Frankfurter Rundschau. The winner, New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras, never laid out a convincing reform plan—he won because he promised Greeks he would lower taxes, raise benefits, and still somehow keep Greece in the euro. “Anyone in Greece’s situation who gives such promises is either stupid or malicious, and anyone who believes them is blind.” That’s why Chancellor Angela Merkel is right to ignore her domestic rivals clamoring for some kind of encouraging signal from Germany to Greece, such as giving it more time to implement reforms. Rewarding Samaras’s platform would send the wrong message, particularly now that the European Union will soon start negotiating another rescue package for the Greeks. If Germany rashly gives out goodies now, the Greeks will simply assume “there’s a lot more to be had.”

The Greeks still “lack insight into their plight,” said Michael Martens in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. No Greek politician is willing to stand up and speak the hard truth: that Greece is still running an annual budget deficit, even after abolishing the “now notorious” 13th, 14th, and in some cases 15th month of yearly wages that many civil servants were getting. If the Greeks are to change their ways, they will need a government that presents reform as being in Greece’s interest, not as something “imposed by vicious foreigners”—which is how they think of the Germans.

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It is precisely this resurgence of timeworn stereotypes that underscores why we need to cut Greece a little slack, said Roland Nelles in Der Spiegel. The debate over the euro has revived “all the old prejudices” that the project of a common union and a common currency was meant to quell. “Simmering beneath the political surface, the yokels, the know-it-alls, and other small minds are organizing against Europe.” If the Greeks need more time to reform, and a little more help, we should work with them. For in doing so, we aren’t just saving Greece, we are saving Europe.