Angela Merkel

The inexperience of the SYRIZA government (2015-2019) forced Greece to undergo another five tough years, noted Charles Dallara, the former Institute of International Finance head who in 2012 led negotiations on a major haircut on Greece's private-held debt, known as the private sector involvement (PSI).

"I tried to provide solutions in the way I could," said Panagiotis Pikrammenos, reflecting on his time as caretaker prime minister during the Greek debt crisis.

Pikrammenos made the comment during a conversation with Tom Ellis, editor in chief at Kathimerini English Edition, at the "50 Years of the Metapolitefsi" conference in Athens on Thursday.

Before the tumultuous year of 2015, Greece actually came close to leaving the eurozone in 2012, following the election of Antonis Samaras as prime minister. Chancellor Angela Merkel was notably apprehensive about the New Democracy leader's pre-election campaign. 

Wolfgang Schaeuble, who helped negotiate German reunification in 1990 and as finance minister was a central figure in the austerity-heavy effort to drag Europe out of its debt crisis more than two decades later, has died. He was 81.

Schaeuble died at home on Tuesday evening, his family told German news agency dpa on Wednesday.

The legend of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) passed away in his sleep.
Schuble, who was part of the Bundestag for more than 50 years, is survived by his wife, four children and four grandchildren.
He was born in Freiburg in 1942, where he studied, and then he studied at the University of Hamburg.

With the relaxing in Greek-Turkish tensions made official by the recent meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece must now deal with German activism on the expansion of the European Union.

SYRIZA's choices of candidates for the local elections in October show that the party is out of touch with society. It is also heading fast toward a phase of introversion and contraction, leaving a vacuum in the opposition.

An acrimonious public conflict has broken out between erstwhile allies SYRIZA and the former leader of the nationalist ANEL party, Panos Kammenos, who were partners in government between 2015 and 2019.

Germany will shut down its three remaining nuclear plants on Saturday, betting that it can fulfil its green ambitions without atomic power despite the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war.

The COVID-19 pandemic is over in Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said, as quoted by Politico.

Lauterbach, who is an epidemiologist, said at a news conference that he made that estimate based on looking at virus variants, vaccination rates and hospital cases.

"We successfully overcame the pandemic in Germany," added the Social Democrat.