PM Tsipras and Political leaders before Parliament on list of reforms

Tsipras will ask the opposition to take a clear stance on the negotiations of the government

The Prime Minister “Attacked” the opposition, during his speech in Parliament on the discussion of the list of reforms presented to European partners.

 

Alexis Tsipras blamed the opposition (and previous government) for leaving “empty coffers” in their wake, that it plundered both pensioners and salaried employees and did not hunt down those that avoided paying their share in this crisis.

 

Mr. Tsipras opened by stating that there is a “collective strategy of negotiations, open and transparent for the Greek people”. He added that “the majority of citizens continues to support the negotiations of the government and asks us to not back down at all”.

 

“We will follow the Greek peoples’ mandate”, he added and stated that “it’s time to speak of truths that can be hidden no longer”.

 

Mr. Tsipras stated that the public sector funds that his government received from Mr. Samaras’ government were empty. That the surplus of which the previous New Democracy government spoke, was much smaller than claimed.

 

According to Mr. Tsipras, the 20th of February decision will mean that the government will implement a program to restructure the economy, to the Greek debt, while he underlined that negotiations are the “road to getting rid of austerity in the Eurozone”.

 

He asked Mr. Samaras, who had blamed him of signing a memorandum, if the law of 100 tranches to settle debts to the public sector is a new memorandum, if it has already brought in 100 million euros in one week. He underlined that the government is seeking an honest settlement with partners, and not an “unconditional surrender”.

 

“The Greek society understands and supports us”, he stated, noting that the Memorandum failed.

 

Addressing Mr. Samaras again, the PM asked him why the previous government did not proceed with tax audits on people included in the Lagarde List, out of which, -as he said-, only 25 of 2,062 names have been audited.

 

According to the Prime Minister, the new Greek government is “bleeding” so that the people won’t have to. He reiterated that his government has proposed reforms to combat illegal trade, to harmonize the relationship between Greek and European laws, to ramp up checks on bank transfers, to combat illegal employment, and a tax on TV advertisements.

 

Mr. Tsipras stated: “The government did not hesitate to mention words such as dignity, national sovereignty, SIEMENS, war reparations, even in Berlin”.