Strike call as Merkel visits Greek parliament

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Athens next week for the first time since the debt crisis erupted for talks with Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras.

Mr Samaras warned yesterday that Greece would run out of money at the end of November if it doesn’t receive the next part of its bailout loans.

Germany has been instrumental in pushing Greece to make austerity cuts in exchange for its loans and Mrs Merkel has been the target of anger at public protests in Athens, with newspapers ridiculing her.

Mr Samaras welcomed Tuesday’s visit. “We will receive her as befits the leader of a great power and a friendly country,” he said.

However Greek trade unions called a three-hour stoppage for a protest rally outside parliament to coincide with the visit against “the neoliberal policies of Mrs Merkel and the European Union’s core leadership”.

The unions said that “workers, pensioners and unemployed people can take no more of the EU’s punitive policies”.

Mrs Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the trip, her first since July 2007, was “a normal visit” in response to an invitation extended by Mr Samaras in Berlin in August.

Mr Seibert said Germany wants Greece to stay in the eurozone but that the Greeks must push ahead with cuts. Since Greece got its first bailout in May 2010, it has repeatedly slashed incomes, hiked taxes and raised retirement ages.

“We want to help Greece stabilise itself in the eurozone. We are doing that by contributing massively to the rescue programmes that are supposed to help get Greece out of the crisis,” Mr Seibert said.