Europe's south bashes Merkel for "work harder" quip

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel walks to the podium during the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the U.N. headquarters in New York, September 21, 2010.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Southern Europeans lashed out at German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, accusing her of twisting the facts to score cheap political gains when she urged them to take fewer holidays and retire later.

Politicians, media and labor unionists from Mediterranean countries bashed Merkel for playing up Europe's north-south divide to appease German voters who are angry at having to bail out euro zone periphery countries in deep debt trouble.

"She is relying on populism," the liberal Athens daily Eleftherotypia said in its main editorial. "It is tragic that Mrs Merkel leads Europe's most powerful country at this critical hour."

Merkel, under fire at home for handing billions of euros to Greece, Ireland and Portugal while raising retirement ages for Germans, said late on Tuesday that holiday and pension rules in Europe need to be unified.

"(People) in countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal should not retire earlier than in Germany. We should all make the same efforts, this is important," she told a party event in Meschede, western Germany.

"We cannot have a currency (the euro) with one person getting lots of holiday and another person very little. Long term this can't work," she said.

Her comments raised hackles across southern Europe, with many media producing figures showing Germans and other north Europeans actually enjoyed more holidays.

"The problem is that the postcard picture of Mediterranean people relaxed on the beach with a glass of wine and fried fish works for tabloid newspapers," Danilo Taino wrote in Italian daily Corriere Della Sera.

The daily Greek tabloid Espresso took a more ironic approach: "Now workers will leave for their summer holidays guilt-ridden and deeply troubled, thinking of Angela Merkel."

GERMANS HAVE MORE FUN

Labor union officials and media in several countries produced figures from statistics agencies showing Germans actually take more holiday than most Europeans and retire on average about the same time as others.

Germans take on average 30 days of holidays a year, compared to 22-25 in Portugal, 23 in Greece and 22 in Spain. There are 10-12 national holidays in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal while Germans enjoy just 9 and Slovakia has 15.

"Merkel's remarks reflect the principle of xenophobia that should not exist at this high level of European politics," Armenio Carlos, coordinator of Portugal's largest union CGTO told Reuters. "She spoke of something she doesn't know."

He said people in Portugal work more hours than in Germany, earn much less and in much more precarious conditions, while they do not retire before 65.

Spaniards also took offence, saying Merkel chose to ignore their sacrifices in the face of severe austerity measures and high unemployment to get out of an economic crisis.

"According to the latest OECD figures for April, the Germans work a total of 7 hours and 25 minutes a day and the French one minute longer, while the Spaniards work almost eight hours a day," said state RTVE television.

Greece's deputy Culture Minister, George Nikitiadis, said Greeks were working more hours a week than Germans on average and were making a huge effort to turn their economy around.

But he did not mind at all that Germans, Greece's biggest tourist clients, enjoyed more holidays than Greeks.

"We would like the Germans to have even more holidays so they can spend more days in our country," he told Reuters.

Portugal's main opposition party leader, Social Democrat Pedro Passos Coelho, who leads in opinion polls ahead of a June 5 snap general election, acknowledged the need for a more uniform EU labor market but warned against going overboard.

"But, what the heck, let's leave a small level of disorganization so that the people don't feel they are wearing a straightjacket, so that they can, in the good south European style, show their joy, their capacity to socialise," he told a conference in Lisbon.

(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou in Athens, Robert Hetz in Madrid, Catherine Hornby in Rome, Andrei Khalip in Lisbon and European bureaux; editing by Mark Heinrich)