Fooled taxpayers?
February 22, 2012
The German Taxpayers' Association (BdSt) has urged federal lawmakers not to endorse the second bailout package for Greece. Legislators are due to vote on the 130-billion-euro ($170 billion) deal in Berlin on February 27.
"The second bailout scheme once again means that taxpayers will be losing out," BdSt President Karl-Heinz Dräke told the daily Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Wednesday.
Dräke argued the private creditors' share in the deal ought to have been much bigger, adding that banks had already passed on a large extent of risky bonds to the public sector.
The BdSt said it was unacceptable that German taxpayers were now liable for potential debt payments to the tune of tens of billions of euros.
"Indebted nations simply have to make a greater reform effort, and Greece's exit from the eurozone must not be a taboo either," Däke maintained.
Bottomless pit?
The Welt newspaper reported on Wednesday that the second bailout scheme for Greece would double the risk for German taxpayers. The daily's estimates show that in a worst-case scenario Germans could be liable for another 31 billion euros - on top of 30 billion euros from the first rescue package for Athens.
The Head of the Interior Affairs Commission in the German Parliament, Wolfgang Bosbach, of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said in a statement he would not vote in favor of the second bailout package next Monday.
"[With the package], we'd be taking risks at the cost of future generations - risks too high to accept," Bosbach said.
hg/ai (AFP, Reuters)