Merkel to visit Greece as PM warns money is running out

German chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Greece next week for the first time since the debt crisis erupted to meet the country’s prime minister — who has warned that Athens will run out of money at the end of November if it does not receive the next part of its bailout loans.

As Germany has been instrumental in pushing Greece to make austerity cuts in exchange for its bailout loans, Ms Merkel has routinely been the object of anger at public protests in Athens. Her photograph has been manipulated by Greek newspapers to look like a Nazi officer and a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras said Ms Merkel’s visit on Tuesday was good news. “We will receive her as befits the leader of a great power and a friendly country,” he told reporters in Athens.

But Greece’s main labour unions were swift to call a protest rally outside parliament on Tuesday against “the neo-liberal policies of Ms Merkel and the EU’s ‘core leadership’, and a three-hour work stoppage in Athens to facilitate participation.

The unions said in a statement that “workers, pensioners and unemployed people can take no more of the European Union’s punitive policies”.

Ms Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, was at pains to portray the trip, her first since Jul 2007, as “a normal visit”. It follows an invitation that Mr Samaras made when he visited Berlin in August.

Mr Seibert underlined Germany’s message that it wants Greece to stay in the euro bloc — but that the Greeks must also push ahead with their painful reforms. Since Greece received its first bailout in May 2010, it has repeatedly slashed incomes, hiked taxes and raised retirement ages.

“We want to help Greece to stabilise itself in the eurozone,” said Ms Merkel.

She has been noncommittal on Greece’s hopes of getting more time to enact reforms and repay its loans, but has rejected talk from some in her centre-right coalition about a possible Greek exit from the 17-nation euro.

Officials from the European Commission, IMF, and ECB — the so-called troika — are currently in Greece assessing the country’s progress in fulfilling the terms for receiving aid.

If their report does not clear the way for the payment of the next €31bn tranche of the country’s bailout, Greece could be forced to default on its debts and perhaps leave the euro.

It is unclear when a decision will come.