Germany is continuing its push for controls over Athens' budget, despite being rebuffed by Greece and other eurozone countries at the European summit.
With Europe set to decide in coming weeks on a second bailout package for Greece totalling over €130 billion, Germany is looking for a way to ensure that Greece meets its part of the bargain. Greek politicians and media have reacted angrily in recent days to Germany's pressure, viewing it as a humiliating curb on national sovereignty. The tensions between Berlin and Athens are a symptom of a fading confidence around Europe that Greece's bailout programme will work—but also of a failure by policy elites to come up with an alternative to ever-deeper austerity.
Since 2010, Greece has persistently fallen behind its targets for reducing its budget deficit, thanks to a combination of its slow implementation of promised economic overhauls and a worsening recession caused partly by the spending cuts and tax increases it has enacted.
Athens' stubborn budget shortfall means the new bailout package will probably need to be substantially bigger than planned. Some European officials say €145 billion is realistic. Lawmakers in Ms Merkel's ruling coalition are growing increasingly restive, fearing that German taxpayers are throwing good money after bad.
The German government insists that more decisive implementation of austerity and structural reforms can break Greece's downward spiral. Berlin officials say they aren't wedded to the specifics of their proposal, floated last week, to appoint a European "budget commissioner" with veto powers over Greek policies, but they want deeper outside involvement in some form.
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