Addressing the presentation of the Act4Greece Program of the National Bank of Greece at Mela Mansion, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stressed the need for timely completion of the first evaluation of the Greek project, “in order to untie the Gordian knot, which is the debt relief.”

Mr. Tsipras said that “any effort to exit the crisis can only be carried out via the consolidation of the banking system”. Therefore, he stressed that banks should play again their essential role, i.e. to finance the real economy, while, as he noted, the recapitalization of banks would pave the way to the return of deposits.

According to Prime Minister, the long-lasting recession had significant negative impacts and led the country to an unprecedented economic and social crisis, a humanitarian crisis. Therefore, he said, “we all must help so as Greece could exit the crisis”.

“There is no doubt that the crisis began from the banking sector,” he said and stressed that “the only way to overcome the crisis is to support the weakest ones and at the same time give the chance to restart the economy. We can only succeed if we join forces,”.