Wolfgang Schäuble

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said that imposition of harsh measures by the Greek government was “an inescapable road from the moment Greece decided to remain in the Eurozone”, during a speech at the EcoFin meeting in Brussels.

The Greek government called on German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble and the IMF to refrain from persisting on more austerity measures. The government spokesperson, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos urged both the IMF and Wolfgang Schauble to adopt a more constructive role in the talks over the Greek program during a press briefing, Tuesday.

Greece was granted some short-term debt relief from European creditors at the December 5 Eurogroup meeting even though it did not meet all the requirements of its bailout program that have staved off both the country’s bankruptcy and Grexit thus far.

In a Handelsblatt interview today, the Greek central bank chief Yiannis Stournaras called for the country’s international creditors to take decisions quickly on how to ease the ailing country’s enormous debt burden.

“Greece has to become competitive to regain the trust of the markets and that is a long road”, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble stated during his arrival at the EuroGroup meeting in Brussels, Monday.

Just as the German Finance Minister reintroduces the prospect of a Grexit, the German Foreign Minister describes those in Germany who would even entertain the notion of Greece’s departure from the Eurozone as “frivolous.”

In an interview published in Germany’s Bild am Sontag today, the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble adhered to his long-held belief that structural reforms, not debt relief, would contribute to Greece achieving a serviceable debt and remaining in the Eurozone, arguing that interest rates and repayments burden its budget only negligibly.

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is currently working on proposals for the implementation of the short-term measures agreed upon for the Greek debt relief, said German Finance Ministry spokesperson Dennis Kolberg. “The EuroGroup agreed on May 24, 2016 for the adoption of short-term measures on the debt after the completion of the first review.

Adjusting Greece’s debt will bring about undesired results according German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. “The country won’t have problems servicing its debt in the next ten years,” he said.

In an interview to the Wall Street Journal, Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos warned that Germany and the other lenders could miss a unique chance of ending the uncertainty in Greece’s struggling economy they refused to agree on a debt restructuring. From the Wall Street Journal: