“We are against austerity as economically it brought no results while it had devastating social consequences”, said the president of SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras in an interview with the Italian newspaper “Il Sole 24 Ore”, property of the Italian Industrialists Association.
“The competition which is based on austerity within a monetary union destabilizes the monetary union itself and plunges it into a self-powered recession and unemployment”, added Mr. Tsipras.
The president of SYRIZA goes into a more detailed breakdown of the political – economic consequences of austerity and stresses: “In Greece austerity caused a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions, for a European country in peacetime. In the four years of the Memorandum my country sank into poverty: according to the latest data from the Greek National Statistical Office, 34.6% of the population lives in poverty. Around 18% of the people cannot even afford medication, according to a study by OECD.”
In order for the country to overcome the crisis, Tsipras is asking for an “exit from austerity through a policy shift, increased demand as a result of a loose monetary policy, the redistribution of income in favor of the working and middle class citizens and public investments to support development”.
He also proposes funding a European “New Deal” focusing on research, technology, infrastructure and the welfare state aimed at creating permanent jobs with decent wages.
He underlined he was not particularly concerned with Francois Hollande’s defeat, which he considers justified, but mainly with the increased popularity of “Marine Le Pen’s populist far-right, as this constitutes a defeat of Europe and Democracy”.
“I am afraid the vote for Le Pen is not merely an electoral but a social phenomenon,” Tsipras, who is also a candidate for the European Commission president, said.
“The European Union, with its lack of transparency and its functioning on bureaucratic criteria, has caused the alienation of the citizens and in some cases even a clear feeling of hostility”.
