Angela Merkel is unshakeable as Athens resounds with angry chants

 

Helena Smith in Athens The Guardian, Tuesday 9 October 2012 20.03 BST

The German chancellor insisted she was not in Greece as a task-master, but protesters outside were having none of it

Angela Merkel and Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, in Athens. Photograph: Getty Images

Up close, Angela Merkel is very static. She stands immovable, her eyes flashing this way and that. In Athens, as she stood behind a lectern after talks with the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, the German chancellor was so restrained she hardly moved at all.

The Greek capital resembled Fort Knox – with riot police guarding her every move, helicopters roaring overhead and marksmen installed on the rooftops of buildings great and small – but Europe's most powerful woman was having none of it. The angry chants and hoarse slogans of the thousands of protesters who had also come out to greet her, eliciting one of the biggest security operations ever put on by near-bankrupt Greece, belonged to another world. As did the copious amounts of acrid teargas that wafted through the Athens air.

In the marble interior of the mansion that is the prime minister's office, Merkel had a message and on this, her first visit to Greece since the eruption of Europe's debt drama, it was a message she was determined to convey.

"I have not come as a taskmaster," she said, her eyes elevated towards the room's ornate sunlit ceiling as if focusing on some indefinable spot. "And nor have I come as a teacher to give grades," she added, now focusing intently on the marble floor. "I have come as a friend to listen and be informed."

Three years into the crisis that began in Athens, Merkel also wanted to say she understood "a lot" was being demanded of Greece. She was not the austerity warmonger that critics had painted her to be. "I come in full and firm awareness of what the people of Greece are going through," she said. But, she continued, Europe's weakest link was badly in need of change – and if reforms were not made now, they would come back "in a much more dramatic way".

"I come from East Germany and I know how long it takes to build reform," she said, almost by way of reassurance. "The road for the people of Greece is very tough, very difficult, but they have put a good bit of the path behind them. I want to say you are making progress!"

But even as the leader attempted not to sound like the matriarch in charge of the family till, there is no denying that that is exactly what she is.

"Saying that she is not here to preach is bullshit," said one of the small retinue of Berlin-based journalists who follow her every move. "She is here to tell them exactly what to do."

For the vast majority of Greeks, no person is more identified than Merkel with the punitive measures that have ensnared the country in unprecedented recession and record levels of poverty and unemployment.

As up to 300,000 took to the streets in an enormous display of fury over the savage cuts and tax increases that have brought growing numbers to the brink of penury, it was the woman who is widely seen as the "architect of austerity" that was in their sights.

"If I met her, I would say if you had read Greek history you would have been more aware," said Takis Stavropoulos, a bearded leftist who had converged with thousands of other protesters on Syntagma square. "If she had done that she would have known we would resist."

No government has been in as difficult a place as the ruling coalition that Samaras has led since June. Although Merkel's surprise visit was seen as a major coup, with officials hailing it as further proof of Berlin's new-found willingness to keep Greece in the 17-member eurozone, there was also an acceptance that the chancellor's six-hour presence in Athens, while rich in symbolism, did not yield much in the way of substance.

Merkel's Calvinist approach to dealing with Europe's crisis-hit southern periphery may have softened, as the leader looks to re-election next year, but as tiny Greece stares into the abyss with enough funds to survive only until the end of next month, the message was clear: apply more draconian measures and the rescue funds will keep pouring in. Echoing the complaint of German commentators, Greek analysts agreed that the visit was long overdue.

"It is hard not to see this visit had a more important message for Germany ahead of [next September's] general elections than it did for Greece," opined the prominent commentator Yiannis Pretenderis.

The sad reality remains. After the biggest debt write-down in the history of world finance and two EU-IMF-sponsored bailouts worth a mammoth €240bn (£190bn), Greece is still far from being saved and, worse, is slipping inexorably into social meltdown with its political arena ever more radicalised. The draconian €13.5bn package of spending cuts that is the price of further aid could, many fear, push Greece further to the edge.

Back at the heart of the government, untouched by the discord of everyday life, the awkwardness of Greece's relationship with its big brother was on display in the body language of its prime minister. As Merkel, the pastor's daughter, spoke, Samaras, whose background is privileged elite, Harvard and moneyed, looked on and winced.

"Greeks are a proud people," he said. "And our enemy is recession. But we are not asking for favours. In my discussion with the German chancellor I pointed out, however, that the Greek people are bleeding." As he spoke, Merkel remained static before pursing her lips and looking away.

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