Economics
Greece Wants a Debt Break. What About Its Poorer Neighbors?
Bulgaria, Albania, and Macedonia want debt relief, too
Newly elected Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras arrives on Jan. 28, 2015, for his first cabinet meeting.
Photographer: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Alexis Tsipras’s first official act as Greece's new prime minister was to lay a small bouquet of roses at the site of a World War II memorial. It marks the execution by firing squad of 200 mostly communist activists by Nazi soldiers.
The move was highly symbolic, and not only because Tsipras heads a party named Syriza, an acronym for the Coalition of the Radical Left. The 40-year-old prime minister’s rise to power has put him on a collision course with Germany, as he struggles to deliver on his campaign promises to renegotiate his country’s debt and overturn the painful austerity demanded by Greece's creditors.