State premier questions constitutional debt-brake
Saarland State Premier Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has said that Germany's constitutional restriction on allowing debt to go above a certain level has been made redundant by the financial crisis.
Speaking in Wednesday's edition of Die Welt newspaper, Kramp-Karrenbauer said the constitutional debt ceiling had been conceived before the economic crisis began.
"But if this situation doesn't exist anymore because of the national debt crisis and the necessary rescue measures, then the economic basis has changed," she said.
Kramp-Karrenbauer also warned against allowing Greece to go bankrupt. "No expert can 100 percent rule out the danger that this would lead to a domino effect, where banks and states fall and at the end the currency union collapses," she said.
She also warned that a Greek bankruptcy would not be easy to control. "At the moment we don't have any instruments for an orderly bankruptcy," she added.
DAPD/The Local/bk
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Speaking in Wednesday's edition of Die Welt newspaper, Kramp-Karrenbauer said the constitutional debt ceiling had been conceived before the economic crisis began.
"But if this situation doesn't exist anymore because of the national debt crisis and the necessary rescue measures, then the economic basis has changed," she said.
Kramp-Karrenbauer also warned against allowing Greece to go bankrupt. "No expert can 100 percent rule out the danger that this would lead to a domino effect, where banks and states fall and at the end the currency union collapses," she said.
She also warned that a Greek bankruptcy would not be easy to control. "At the moment we don't have any instruments for an orderly bankruptcy," she added.
DAPD/The Local/bk
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