Germans like Greece

A representative survey conducted by the Forsa opinion research institute for the weekly magazine Stern has found that a slim majority of Germans approves of their government's and Europe's efforts to stabilize the Greek economy.

The poll of some 1,000 people in early May showed 52 percent of Germans agreed with the European plan to prevent Greece from defaulting on its enormous public debt. However, a significant 43 percent of those surveyed were opposed.

Despite all the bad news coming out of Athens, a large number of Germans still held a positive view of the Greeks. Three-quarters of those polled (76 percent) considered Greeks to be either nice or very nice.

Fifty-seven percent of those queried said Greece, as a whole, was an attractive vacation destination, but more than 40 percent added that, due to the current level of domestic tensions from the financial crisis, they would not travel to the country.

Germans are also divided when it comes to the euro. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) said they were proud to live in a country that had introduced the common European currency, but 54 percent said, given the choice, they would prefer to go back to the old German deutschmark.

gb/dpa
Editor: Nancy Isenson