Angela Merkel to install 'gauleiter' in Greece, says MP

A GERMAN plan to limit Greece's control over its economic affairs, with an EU-appointed "budget commissioner" put in place to veto its government's decisions, has sparked outrage, with one UK Tory MP using the Nazi term "gauleiter".

The Mail on Sunday reports that the "secret proposal" was sent to finance ministry officials in the Eurozone on Friday amid intense talks to agree a second rescue package for Greece, which could go into default as early as mid-March.

It calls for an EU official to be appointed with the power to veto decisions taken by the Greeks if they are not in line with EU spending targets. A source told the newspaper that a front-runner for the job was the EU's head of economic affairs, Olli Rehn.

Some observers see the proposals as an attack on the EU nation's sovereignty – and, indeed, the Mail quotes the document as saying: "Greece has to accept shifting budgetary sovereignty to the European level for a certain period of time.

"Budget consolidation has to be put under a strict steering and control system."

Eurosceptic Tory MP Peter Bone told the newspaper: "The Germans would be dictating what happens in Greece without any reference to the will of the people. I find it incredible that they would think of sending some latter-day gauleiter to Athens."

In harking back to the Third Reich, Bone is reflecting an existing strain of anti-German feeling in Greece provoked by the national economic crisis and often articulated against Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Fake pictures of Merkel wearing a Nazi uniform and armband – with the swastika surrounded by the gold-and-blue stars of the EU – have been brandished at demonstrations against government austerity plans.

The memory of the War, during which Greeks suffered at German hands, makes Germany's involvement in a £109bn economic rescue plan controversial at best. Bone told the Mail: "Given what happened in the Second World War, the Greeks will never accept being subjugated by the Germans." ·