According to Reuters, the hardline comments from Wolfgang Schaeuble laid bear the fraying relations between the two countries, with Tsipras struggling to find any EU allies in his push to end austerity in Greece and renegotiate the terms of a mammoth bailout program.
Merkel spoke to Tsipras by phone on Monday and invited him to Germany for talks on March 23, their respective offices said.
They will face a difficult task in trying to smooth ties after a tumultuous few weeks. Germany is clearly alarmed at the prospect of Greece not honoring past financial pledges and triggering a crisis that could force it out of the euro zone.
“They have destroyed all trust once again,” Schaeuble told a panel discussion in Berlin on Monday, saying he had no clue as to how Athens intended to solve its problems. “Among my colleagues at the international institutions I can find no one who can tell me how that might actually work,” he said.
Highlighting a persistent problem that has exasperated officials, Greece announced a large revision of its 2014 budget surplus on Monday, saying it came in at just 0.3 percent of output compared with a previous estimate of 1.5 percent.