Financial Times
February 19, 2012
A week ago, not many people in Brussels knew who Karolos Papoulias was.
But in the corridors of power and the evening salons where the European Union’s future is mulled over dinner served by liveried waiters, the Greek president and his angry outburst against Germany’s finance minister – complete with thinly veiled references to Greece’s Nazi occupation – has suddenly become the topic everyone wants to discuss.
“I had no idea it had gotten this bad,” said one senior European diplomat.
The latest round of hand-wringing is only partly due to the substance of the dispute between Mr Papoulias and Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance chief who suggested Greece was a “bottomless pit” where another €130bn in bail-out money might be wasted.
Most believe that at an all-night meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday night, Mr Schäuble and his brethren will, at long last, approve the new rescue and once again pull Greece back from the cliff of bankruptcy.
Instead, what Mr Papoulias has forced European officials to think hard about is whether his anger is the temporary rage of a Greek political elite roughly treated by the country’s increasingly frustrated creditors – or a sign of things to come elsewhere in the bloc.
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