Former Finance Minister of Greece, and secretary of the DiEM25 party, Yanis Varoufakis DAY 25 secretary Yiannis Varoufakis claimed Greece had never exited the memorandum, but instead was in a deeper memorandum.
Speaking to George Pierro and Eleni Stergiou on Thema Radio 104.6, the self-styled radical Marxist referred to the recent announcement by the Greek government on the abolition of capital controls, the fourth memorandum and the relationship between ex-PM Alexis Tsipras and his conservative ally in the previous government Panos Kammenos.
“The capital controls were what the troika imposed on our country in order for it not to escape the debt-colony. At that point, during those 5 months, there was an effort, I would really have liked very much that this effort had been made with the New Democracy (ND) and with SYRIZA and with everyone because it was a national affair. ND at that time ND was calling on Jeroen (Jeroen Dijsselbloem ex-Dutch Finance Minister and head of the Eurogroup) to hang tight, contributing the maximum for capital controls, SYRIZA gave up the fight in the middle and we have been in the same debt colony for eight years”, said Mr. Varoufakis.
Referring to Euclid Tsakalotos, the Finance Minister of the previous government, the secretary of DiEM25 said: “If I had signed the third memorandum in April, May, June, when the lenders were demanding it, do you know how they would have referred to me as? The serious minister, who saw the light, who brought the calm, brought about stability. But what would I have brought? What Mr. Tsakalotos brought. What did Mr. Tsakalotos bring? He cut EKAS (Pensioners’ Social Solidarity Benefit), cut pensions, sold off our trains for pennies on the dollar, for heaven’s sake, forty-three million euros, which is a ridiculous amount, to a bankrupt Italian company that has no money to invest in trains. If I were to say yes to everything to Mr. Jeroen and Mr. Wolfgang they would have lauded me too.”
Varoufakis continued by rejecting both Syriza’s and ND’s claims that Greece had exited the memoranda saying the country was deeper in the memorandum, which was “the fourth, signed in August 2018, about a year ago, which of course they did not name a memorandum, they called it an exit from the memoranda, the ministers of Tsipras, but it is the fourth and worst, in 2021 and after ’22 that is, will there be a reduction in the primary surplus, this is in the fourth memorandum, does Mr Staikouras want this to happen?”
