Prime Minister Iveta Radičová returned from a one-day working visit to Berlin late on Wednesday, August 25, after holding talks with German President Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In her discussion with Chancellor Merkel, Radičová explained why Slovakia has refused to contribute more than €800 million in loans to Greece as part of the European Union’s €30 billion bailout plan to help the struggling southern European economy. In a thinly-veiled reference to the troubled country, she said that the irresponsible handling of public finances by certain countries had forced the European Union to adopt unorthodox, hasty decisions when matters became untenable.
Chancellor Merkel countered by saying that the aid to Greece was not only aid to this one country but to the euro currency as a whole. She added that this aspect may have been discussed in Slovakia (which was in the midst of a general election campaign at the time) only towards the end of the overall discussion. “Germany [with the largest economy in Europe] could not handle this situation in any other way, or we would have put other eurozone countries in a bad situation,” Merkel said, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
