Germany expects Greece to continue to comply

German government spokesman Georg Streiter said on Sunday that Berlin expected whichever party takes power following Greece's general election to stay the course on the terms of the country's international bailout, which has kept Athens from going into default.

"Greece has complied with its obligations in the past," Streiter said. "The federal government expects Greece to continue to comply with its obligations."

"Every new government has to abide by the contractual obligations of the previous government," he added.

However, the government spokesman declined to comment specifically on a report published by the online edition of German news magazine "Spiegel" on Saturday. It said that unlike in the past, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble were now confident that the eurozone of nations that use the EU's common currency could cope with Athens leaving the euro and returning to the drachma, a scenario popularly dubbed a Greek exit or "Grexit."

The Spiegel report said one reason for this was the successful launch of the 500-billion-euro ($600 billion) European Stability Mechanism, which would be available to eurozone countries that run into trouble in the future. It also said that it was thought that the ESM also made it less likely that other bailout recipients Ireland and Portugal might leave.

Fears of a possible Syriza victory

It also said that there were fears that if the far-left Syriza party won the January 25 Greek election, there would be almost no chance of keeping the country in the euro.

"The German government considers a eurozone exit to be almost inevitable if opposition leader Alexis Tsipras (of Syriza) leads the government after the election and abandons budgetary discipline and does not repay the country's debts," the report said.

Syriza has been leading in opinion polls for months and Tsipras has said that if he gets his the hands on the levers of power, he will seek to roll back many of the reforms the current government had made to comply with the terms of Greece's bailout and begin to get its financial house in order.

This month's snap election was called after Greek lawmakers failed to elect a new president through three rounds of voting.

Greece's 240-billion-euro bailout is funded and supervised by the so-called "troika" made up of the European Central Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

pfd/se (dpa, Reuters, AFP)