While lawmakers in Germany, the biggest contributor to euro zone bailouts, gave their go-ahead for the currency bloc to negotiate a third bailout for Greece on Friday, more than half of the Germans participating in a poll think the planned deal with Greece is bad. Many would have preferred that the crisis-stricken country left the euro zone rather than getting the chance for further aid, the opinion poll showed.
It was German Chancellor Merkel, leader of the EU's biggest economy and effective bailout paymaster, who spearheaded the marathon Brussels talks last weekend that brought Greece back from the brink of crashing out of the Eurozone. To prevent a catastrophic "Grexit," Greece's hard-left Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to sweeping reforms on pensions, taxes and labour laws that were harsher than those he had urged people to reject in a July 5 referendum.
In a survey by YouGov, accessed by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, 56 percent of respondents said they thought the plan for such a deal with Greece was bad, with just over one-fifth of them saying it was very bad, Reuters reported. This deal could total 86 billion euros ($93 billion) over three years.
Of a total 1,380 Germans polled, 48 percent of them would have liked to see Greece quit the euro zone. The poll also showed a lack of enthusiasm in Europe's largest economy about the result of Friday's vote, according to The Fiscal Times. Only two percent deemed it to be positive, while another 27 percent said they thought it was somewhat positive.
Only a third of the Germans polled clearly said they wanted Greece to remain a member of the single currency bloc, the German newspaper said, the Daily Mail reported.
A separate survey by opinion pollster Forsa found that 53 percent of German voters had wanted parliament to back the negotiations, with 42 percent against.
