German and Greek Officials Play Down Expectations

The foreign ministers of Germany and Greece sought Monday to scale back expectations that a series of high-level meetings this week would produce significant decisions over Greece’s future in the European currency union, calling instead for a “climate change” in tone between the two countries.

Dimitris L. Avramopoulos’s visit to Berlin for talks with his counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, was intended in part to lay the groundwork for Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.

Expectations are running high that the two visits, along with others this week that mark a return to business for European leaders after their summer vacations, will lead to firm proposals to help resolve a debt crisis that has been plaguing the Continent and unsettling markets for months.

Mr. Avramopoulos played down reports that the Greek prime minister was expected to ask for more time to meet fiscal targets set by the country’s international lenders in return for two bailouts. Mr. Avramopoulos said that within weeks his government would introduce a package of measures that would satisfy the lenders’ demands.

Representatives of the “troika” of lenders — the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — are scheduled to submit a report next month on how successful Athens has been in meeting its commitments in areas like reducing government spending, cutting its budget deficit and selling state-owned assets.

Greece has been slow to implement the changes demanded by the troika. If it fails to uphold its commitments, it faces the prospect of having its bailout funding cut off, leading to a debt default and the possibility that the country would be forced to leave the euro zone.

The foreign ministers sought to shift the focus to what they said was a larger threat: the rise of populism fueled by angry rhetoric and frustration over the debt crisis and the measures that have been adopted to deal with it, including deep spending cuts.

Mr. Samaras was able to build a fragile coalition government after elections in June when Syriza, a far-left party, drew 27 percent of the vote and Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party, won 7 percent. As the crisis drags into its third year, other European countries, including Austria, the Netherlands, France and Poland, have also experienced a rise in extremism.

“At this time, especially, it is very important that we cultivate a dialogue based on trust and closeness,” Mr. Westerwelle said. “It is very easy to tear down the house of Europe with the pickaxe of criticism. Is much more difficult to reconstruct such a house of Europe. We are aware of our responsibility.”

In addition to Ms. Merkel’s visit with Mr. Samaras on Friday, she is scheduled to meet with President Fran?ois Hollande of France on Thursday. Mr. Hollande is expected to urge the German chancellor to soften her stance toward Athens to ensure that the country is able to remain a member of the euro zone.

On Saturday, Mr. Hollande is to meet in Paris with the Greek prime minister. In addition, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who presides over meetings of the euro zone’s finance ministers, is scheduled to visit Athens on Wednesday.

In an interview published Monday by the German newspapers Berliner Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau, a top European Central Bank official, J?rg Asmussen, said he wanted Greece to remain in the currency union, but added, “Securing that is in the hands of Greece.”