| Reparations and budgets | |||||
|
|||||
AS THE excessive indebtedness of Greece deepens daily - and considering the social and political gridlock towards which the IMF, European Central Bank and EU Commission-troika recipe is leading us - it is now apparent that the only way out of the memorandum would be through taking major policy initiatives.
One of these initiatives is the systematic and effective pursuit of war reparations and of the forced “occupation loan” granted by Greece to Germany in 1942. According to the estimates of the National Council for the Claim of German Debts, led by the Resistance hero Manolis Glezos, the debt now exceeds, in present value, 162 billion euros plus interest.
Confronted with widespread Greek public opinion in favour of such a move, Prime Minister George Papandreou announced on January 12 that Greece would support Italy at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a legal dispute submitted to it by Germany following an Italian court’s decision allowing the victims of Distomo to seek compensation through the seizure of German property in Italy (see story at left).
Germany’s debt to Greece
The German wartime debt to our country results mainly from:
Greece’s public debt
According to IMF figures (see Report 10/110, published 5 May 2010, p125), the total debt (public and private) of Greece before the signing of the memorandum amounted to 427bn euros, of which 329bn euros concerned public debt.
At the same time, a large part of the public debt at the end of 2009, which amounted to 150bn euros, was held by foreign, mainly European, banks. In particular, German banks were then in possession of Greek government bonds worth at least 31.5bn euros.
If one considers that 22.3bn euros out of the total 80bn euro loan from the eurozone countries will be granted to us by the German state-owned KfW (Kreditbank fuer Wiederaufbau) bank, then the total public debt to German banks for the above reasons amounts to 53.8bn euros. To these amounts should also be added the amounts owed to German banks by several Greek banks, which are also creditors of the Greek state.
It is therefore reasonable that the Greek side should declare to Berlin that the amount directly or indirectly owed by this country either to Germany or to German banks will not be paid as long as Germany refuses to pay to Greece its own debt, amounting to 162bn euros plus interest.
State budget
Indeed, addressing parliament on 13 December 2010, Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis agreed that the debt owed by Germany to Greece amounts to 162bn euros - comprising 108bn euros from the compensation awarded to Greece by the Paris Peace Conference to repair the damage caused by Nazi troops to the country’s economic infrastructure, and 54bn euros because of the forced “occupation loan”.
So, as a first step, the government should register the “corresponding German debt to the Greek Republic” in the uncollectible debts towards the Greek government and, by extension, in the state budget, since it constitutes an immediately payable outstanding debt. Following this, the finance ministry should give the relevant instructions to its services to take immediate action for the recovery of this outstanding German debt.
The registration in the state budget of the “corresponding German debt to the Greek republic” would turn Greece’s budget into a surplus, with everything this may mean for its exit from EU fiscal surveillance, the compliance with the Maastricht performance criteria, the creditworthiness of the country, the value of the spreads etc.
At the same time, in accordance with Eurostat rules, Germany would be forced to register its public debt to Greece in its own national budget and, as a consequence, Berlin would possibly be set to the suffering of budgetary surveillance by the EU, as it became clear that it would meet neither the Maastricht criteria nor the Stability Pact terms.
|
|||||
| Athens News 17/Jan/2011 page 14-15 | |||||
|
|
|||||
| PRINT ARTICLE | SEND ARTICLE TO A FRIEND | |||||
|
|||||
|
(1 vote) |
|||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This is a very serious matter and sais a great deal of how poorly the Germans regard us.
But that aside, my grandmother's family were ripped off to the tune of millions. Great garnd dad had placed all of his hard earned money and savings in the national bank of Greece and after the war that bank 'claimed' that the Germans took everything.
This had detrimental consequences for the family in the following generations and while my gran is now dead, her family and her brother's and sister's families are very much alive and very large
Come on madame Merkel, show us some respect