Greek PM Alexis Tsipras assured the European Parliament and the European Commission that he would continue to implement the agreed reforms, while he also expressed his full support of the Prespes Agreement with FYROM, during a speech before the EP on Tuesday morning.

Speaking before the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on the “Future of Europe”, the Greek Prime Minister stressed that the end of the memorandums did in no way mean the return of Greece to the past but instead will be a break with the past to avoid adopting the same mistakes in policies which had led the country in the economic crisis in the first place.

In his address, Mr Tsipras was critical of a large part of the EU establishment which he claimed had a “fetish” with fiscal austerity and the imposition of technocrats from the ECB and informal organs like the Eurogroup which “held the keys of the country’s economic policies”.

The Greek PM touched on the refugee crisis warning of the danger of the rise of the extreme right in Europe. He pointed out that while other member states were building walls, the Greek citizens showed great courage in managing the issue.

At the end of the Greek PM’s speech, Spanish MEP Gonzalez Pons of the Christian Democrat group in the EP said that the congratulations to Greece for exiting the memorandums should not be directed at the SYRIZA/ANEL government but the Greek public who had born the brunt of the crisis