Germany earns billions of euros from Greek crisis

Eurozone members initially agreed to hand in any interest to the central Greek bank as a point of EU solidarity. However, when the second rescue program began in 2015, the payment return operation was terminated. Interest was never mentioned in the German federal budget that year, and therefore interest never returned to Athens.

Since then, Berlin has refused to resume the salary programme, despite Athens' efforts to meet its creditors' demands, reports “Russia Today”, Periscopi broadcast.

According to the German daily “Suddeutsche Zeitung”, German development bank “Kf” received 393m euros in interest payments for a 15.2 billion-euro loan he made in Athens in 2010.

A scheme of buying state debts from central eurozone banks brought Bundesbank a profit of 952m euros between 2010 and 2012. The European Central Bank collected more than 1.1 billion euros in 2016 in interest payments for Greek bonds of nearly 20 billion euros, the report shows.

The European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

“It may be legal how Germany deals with the crisis in Greece, it is not legal in the moral sense of solidarity”, explains the chairman of the budgetary issues in Bundestag for the Green Party, Sven Christian Kindler.

The earned “interest should finally be paid to Greece. It cannot be that (German Finance Minister) Willfng Schäuble wants to rehabilitate the German budget with Greek interest”, says EU expert Manuel Sarrazzin.

Last year, Schaeuble informed the Greek government to carry out unpopular reforms if it wants to stay in the eurozone, excluding the ease of debts for Athens.

Eurozone ministers agreed in June to unblock the last tranche of Greece's 8.5 billion-euro bailout package to help the country avoid a delay in write-off of nearly 7.3 billion euros.

Since the beginning of Greece's 2009 crisis, Germany's Finance Ministry has collected in the amount of 1.3 billion euros as a result of its loans to Athens and reports of its debt purchase programmes Euractiv./Periscopi/