Wolfgang Schaeuble confirms the IMF's estimates: the new aid package for Greece should amount to 11 billion euros. "I know the figures, and they don't seem that unrealistic to me," the German Finance Minister stated in an interview.
Aid to Athens is one of the key issues at stake in the German elections this fall. Schaeuble, in fact, denied having concealed Greece's actual budget needs for electoral reasons: "The current aid program," he explained, "expires at the end of 2014. Therefore, by mid-next year, we will have to assess whether Greece has met its commitments, whether it has a primary surplus, and what its actual needs are."
But the SPD, the opposition party in Germany, continues to attack the aid to Greece. According to Carsten Schneider, chairman of the Social Democrats' parliamentary group, in addition to this €11 billion, Athens "will need a double-digit sum for the period from 2015 to 2020."
