Deputy Prime Minister Giannis Dragasakis met with the harsh criticism during the five-hour Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) government briefing on the course of negotiations with the country’s international creditors from the European Council, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Sources at the closed meeting state that Greek Speaker of the House, Zoe Konstantopoulou, criticized the government for its lack of credibility and abandoning the commitments it had made to the Greek people in Thessaloniki.  The left faction of SYRIZA also criticized the party’s leadership with Deputy Speaker of the House, Alexis Mitropoulos, stating that it was a mistake that the government accepted the Eurogroup agreement of February 20.

Government circles state that Dragasakis informed his party that the government will be ready to enter an agreement with its EU partners on May 19.

Following the meeting, the SYRIZA political secretariat announced that the party’s “red lines” are still in tact, while it was underlined that lenders demands cannot be accepted. Despite the climate of optimism concerning a forthcoming agreement, the party’s announcement states that “the memorandum program of the Samaras government” will not be implemented.

More specifically:

“The insistence of lenders to implement the memorandum program of the Samaras government, creating a stifling noose of political pressure and funding asphyxiation to the country is in direct contrast to the essence of democracy and popular sovereignty in Europe. It expresses an obsessive attachment to austerity that destroys the social state, taking the oligarchical administration of European affairs to closed halls that are not influenced by social will, paving the way for the rise of an extreme right in Europe.”