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Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has been sidelined from
Greece debt negotiations, says he wished the country still had the drachma, and
that Greece would never sign any bailout plan on unfavourable terms.
Continuing the war of words with Eurozone
policymakers Varoufakis said, at a conference in Athens Thursday, he would
reject any agreement in which “the numbers do not add up.”
He also said that deep down each
member of the Eurozone now agreed Greece should never have joined, adding that
it “was very badly constructed.”
“But once you are in, you don’t get
out without a catastrophe,” he said.
RT.com reports:
Varoufakis suggested the €27 billion
in bonds owed to the ECB, after €6.7 billion are repaid in July and August
should be pushed back which could be done by a bond-swap.
The finance minister says the swap
is not an option as it fills ECB chief Mario Draghi's "soul with
fear."
Varoufakis said Draghi is afraid to
irritate Germany with a debt swap because of Berlin's objection to the European
Central Bank’s bond buying program.
The Greek Finance minister first
raised the idea of swapping Greek debt for growth-linked or perpetual bonds
when the leftist Syriza government came to power earlier this year. It dropped
the proposal after a cool reaction from the Eurozone.
So far Greece has been settling its
IMF repayments on time. Athens repaid €750 million in debt interest early this
week, but Varoufakis warned then that the country could default next month if
the liquidity issue is not resolved.
Greek GDP figures, published Wednesday by the European statistical
agency Eurostat, revealed that economy was returning to recession and is facing
a serious cash crisis. It shrank 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2015.
Greece is struggling to repay its
multibillion euro debt to the troika of international lenders – the IMF, the
ECB and the European Commission - trying to find a way to get a further €7.2
billion bailout unlocked.
Greece
Replaces Finance Minister Varoufakis As Lead In Debt Talks
The Greek government has given
Financial Relations Minister Euclid Tsakalotos the lead in negotiating with
international creditors. The Syriza-led coalition says the team headed by
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has failed to produce results.
The Athens government announced the
decision on Monday, April 27, 2015.
Tsakalotos will represent Greece at
the next Eurogroup meeting of finance ministers on May 11, a landmark date for
Greece as the government has to persuade the Troika of lenders –the EU, ECB and
IMF to release new funds. It is hoped the economics professor will take a more
active face-to-face role in negotiations with Greek creditors.
Greece’s economic team headed by
Varoufakis has been trying to find a compromise with the troika for about 3
months, since Syriza won
the general election at the end of January. So far the economic plans
presented have been criticized for a lack of detail.
Reacting to the news a senior
European Union official told the Guardian it was ‘impossible’ to deal with
Varoufakis. “It had got to the point where eyes roll,” he said.
“People had got sick and tired of
being lectured about austerity and the effects of the crisis. Any sympathy for
Greece was eroded by his failure to draft concrete proposals,” the EU official
said.
By sidelining Varoufakis from
negotiations with European creditors, Syriza is calming down its anti-austerity
stance, James Meadway, senior economist at New Economic Foundation, told RT.
“What this reshuffle suggests, when
you have Euclid Tsakalotos taking more of a role in the negotiations – he’s
very pro-European, very pro-euro – it suggests the Greek government is inching
away from its hard-line austerity position,” he said.
Greece needs to get about €7.2 billion from
Europe to pay outstanding debt. Should Athens fail to get the money, the
country could default in May. This could force the country to leave the euro,
which could then create a domino effect across Europe.
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