Angela Merkel and Italian PM Matteo Renzi on Wednesday said the door was open for more negotiations with a “capital controlled” Greece, yet the message to Athens’ radical leftist government was that the euro area rules apply to everyone, austerity plagued or not.
Merkel hosted Renzi in Berlin, telling reporters after their meeting that “we have to keep to the rules we’ve given ourselves …”
“As long as we are within a shared community, that is Europe, what is important is to keep rules, shared rules,” Renzi added. “We have to reach a common position eventually.”
In the face of the one-time “southern European bloc” that SYRIZA once hoped to create, Renzi said it was unthinkable for Rome to continue to subsidize Greece’s early retirements when it was cutting back on its own.
Bloomberg reports that French President Francois Hollande urged a swift aid deal for Greece that meets “European rules”.
