“We can certainly help Athens have more time, but the causes of the problem must be removed” and “some measures announced by the new Greek government they are not going in the right direction”. This is the opinion expressed by Wolfgang Schaeuble, German Finance Minister, conservative and standard bearer of strict accounting, at the end of today's meeting with his Greek counterpart, Yanis Varoufakis, radical leftist economist and member of the new Greek executive headed by Alexis Tsipras. An appointment that arrived a few hours after the last and decisive ones moves by the ECB against Athens.
"Germany respects the outcome of the last votes in Greece", continued Schaeuble, underlining that now, however, it is necessary to find an agreement on the Greek debt for the good of "all of Europe".
In today's meetingthere was no talk of a cut or extension of the debt”, Varoufakis said later, but Greece “remains a country in the euro area” and “needs the political, technical and moral support of its European partners”.
“What we ask is to present our proposals to the partners in order to arrive at a synthesis – continued the Greek minister -. There should be a bridging program between now and the end of May to come to an agreement that leads to a new contract with the ECB, the EU and the IMF, once and for all. Athens will do everything it can to avoid a default. We will have to strive to do everything possible to avoid a default. I am sure that together with our partners we can ban this word”.
Varoufakis insisted a lot on the timing of action: "The only thing we ask - he said - is don't be pressured with an ultimatum. Give us time until the end of May or the beginning of summer to be able to put our proposed solutions on the table. Greece needs Germany, which in the past found itself in its same situation, that is, humiliated by other countries and in a heavy depression, the one that led to the rise of Nazism in the last century. The third party in the Greek Parliament is the Nazi Party”, the minister recalled, referring to Golden Dawn.
In any case, there are two key aspects that Athens deems unacceptable: the first - continued Varoufakis - is that the plan carried out so far "does not intervene on the issue of excesses of corruption and positions of rent, but seeks to heal Greece starting from below, not from above”; the second is that the agreement currently in force "it puts the question of paying off debts before repairing the economy, and this means that Greece can never recover".
Varoufakis then admitted Greece's mistakes, in particular with regard to the limited progress in reforms, but underlined that this is not the reason that the Eurozone is in deflation: it is rather a question of "a systemic crisis" which is resolved as such, "thinking like Europeans" and starting to use "political tools" again. The minister then compared Greece "to canaries in the mines", whose death signaled the presence of poisonous gas. The canaries were "the weakest part, which died first, but was not responsible for the poisonous gases". In short, Greece is the first domino to fall, but it is not responsible for the domino effect.
“We agreed to disagree,” Schaeuble said. But Varoufakis immediately corrected the joke of his German colleague: "No, we have agreed to start a discussion as European partners".
Meanwhile, in Paris, the president Francois Hollande he said that France's role in the face of the Greek challenge is "to find a solution, to contribute to an agreement" in "respect for the Greek vote" and "European rules". The number one of the Elysée then invited the new Greek premier Alexis Tsipras to go and speak with the chancellor Angela Merkel, assuring him that "he will be received".
