What do you mean Alexis Tsipras when he asks his European partners for a more realistic attitude on Greece? He explains it Yanis Varoufakis, Minister of Finance, in an interview with German Bild: Greece needs “a debt restructuring. Only in this way can we guarantee and effectively complete the repayment of the largest possible portion of the debt“. Varoufakis said he was ready to immediately give up further loans and aid programs if the group of international creditors - the IMF, the ECB and the EU Commission - offered a debt restructuring which, according to Varoufakis, is also supported by the IMF. Furthermore, Athens needs "a lengthening of deadlines".
The government in office, continued the Minister, wants to avert a Grexit: "This option makes no sense and I exclude it - he told the newspaper - but never say never, I too cannot exclude that a comet could collide with the Earth" . "We don't want any more money", reiterates Varoufakis, according to whom Berlin "has already given too much". Athens does not need new funding "for wages, pensions or reimbursements" and a agreement "could be signed overnight" but "only if Chancellor Merkel is also present".
The new austerity plan requested by creditors “belongs to the past. No escape: we have to wipe the slate clean and start over”, underlined Varoufakis, admitting, however, enormous administrative problems: "Our problem with VAT is that we are not able to increase it" but an increase to 23% of the rate for basic necessities, he adds, "would flow even less VAT into the state coffers".
In Berlin, meanwhile, the meeting of the CDU leadership, Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats, is underway. And the climate is one of growing tension: The European Union must develop an emergency plan to deal with the possibility of Greece leaving the euro area, asked the European commissioner for economic and digital affairs, Guenther Oettinger. If Athens fails to respond to international creditors' demands for further cuts to the pension system and negotiations fail, the Greece will become "from XNUMX July – he observes – an emergency zone" for Europe. Negotiations therefore need to be accompanied by a series of meetings between the parties, including the EU Commission, for develop a plan B. According to Oettinger, Greece, in fact, will have considerable problems in the fields of energy, security and health if the negotiations fail. The primary objective remains the maintenance of Athens in the Eurozone even if "German taxpayers cannot pay Greek pensions".
