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[/audioplayer]German chancellor Angela Merkel may still be the most formidable politician in Europe, but this week she lost a bit of her reputation as the scourge of Mediterranean debtor nations. Greece’s firebrand leftist premier, Alexis Tsipras, actually gets on well with Merkel, however much his countrymen enjoy burning her in effigy and adorning her portraits with Hitler moustaches. In a recent profile of their relationship in Der Spiegel, Tsipras gushed, ‘She has this East German way of telling you honestly and straightforwardly what she thinks.’ His top adviser Nikos Pappas also admires Merkel, calling her one of the few leaders in the EU who would rather look at questions politically than economically. She grew up among communists, after all.
The past two weeks have seen the umpteenth exercise in European Union brinksmanship since Greece began having trouble paying its debts five years ago.
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