German FinMin Wolfgang Schäuble raised the ante even more on Wednesday in the high-stakes “Greek issue” dominating the eurozone’s attention, saying he couldn’t rule out a Greek default.
“I would have to think very hard before repeating this in the current situation,” he told the WSJ and France’s “Les Echos” when asked if he could issue a reassurance along the lines of his late 2012 statement.
“The sovereign, democratic decision of the Greek people has left us in a very different situation,” he said, in reference to the Jan. 25 election that brought the radical leftists to power in a coalition with a small right-of-centre anti-austerity party.
The reporters also said the powerful German minister “showed no willingness to compromise in the negotiations to unlock the final instalment of Greece’s €245-billion bailout.”
In a related development, Jean-Claude Juncker was quoted on wednesday as describing Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis as “learning on the job” during heart surgery..!
The EU Commission president reportedly made the comment in a meeting with German lawmakers, according to Handesblatt.
Finally, in a lengthy feature piece printed in the NYTimes, FinMin Yanis Varoufakis is asked why the four-month-old SYRIZA government has proceeded with liberal reforms (called right-wing by the author) such as privatizations or “left-wing” reforms “like going after wealthy tax evaders.”
The NYTimes writer, Suzy Hansen, notes that “Syriza had done neither.”
Yanis’ answer is “When?”
“I have done nothing else for two months than to negotiate for the right to negotiate — to have this discussion. I still haven’t won that right. Which means everything we do has to go through this negotiating process.”
“They do not believe a little colonial outpost in the eurozone has a right to have an opinion about its own affairs and the euro.”
Finally, the passage that generated a firestorm of publicity in Greece, at least, was this:
“It seems as if there were leaks from within (Riga informal Eurogroup summit) that were disconnected from the reality of what happened. All these reports that I was abused, that I was called names, that I was called a time-waster and all that: Let me say that I deny this with every fiber of my body.”
What follows is the reporter’s kicker on the summit: “He says he taped the meeting but cannot release the tape because of confidentiality rules.)”
Pressed later in the evening over the eyebrow-raising assertion, Varoufakis merely stated that “…no one respects more than me the privacy of my talks during negotiations with the institutions and our partners.” He didn’t clarify, however, whether he actually recorded portions of the in camera session.
