Tsipras: Europe Needs "New Deal"

Taking a page from former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Greece’s major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras said Europe needs to find another way to deal with its economic problems and austerity pushed on countries in crisis.
Tsipras, the candidate for the European Left Party’s bid to be European Commission President, told Agence France Presse in an interview that, “There is no way we will exit this crisis if we do not proceed to a European New Deal,” referring to the 1930’s stimulus programs enacted to help the United States overcome the Great Depression.
Europe needs “a new agreement on investment funding to benefit employment and social security,” he said.
Tsipras is a leading opponent of European austerity politics and particularly of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who insisted on big pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions in Greece in return for backing international bailout loans of 240 billion euros ($330.7 billion) the bulk of it put up by her country.
The rescue packages from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) saved Greece from bankruptcy, but the austerity measures dictated by the creditors plunged the country into a deep recession with record unemployment and deep poverty.
“Greece is an example to avoid, this should not happen in other countries,” Tsipras said. “The response to this Europe of intolerance, of social dissolution, is the abolition of austerity policies,” he said.
Tsipras said if he came to power he would revise or renege on the bailout deals although that would leave Greece broke and unable to borrow money. He hasn’t offered an alternative.
“We want to demolish the bailout deal that dramatically changed the life of Greeks. We will carry out reforms against corruption and waste without slashing public finances that are necessary,” he said. “The solution is not monetary competition but solidarity between European states,” he added without explaining what he meant.
An engineer by training, Tsipras, 40, is the youngest political leader in a country that before the crisis was dominated by political dynasties on the right and center-left before the collapse of the PASOK Socialists who backed austerity and are part of a coalition in the government of Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras.
Tsipras was born in July 1974, a fateful year for Greece that marked the collapse of a seven-year army dictatorship that mercilessly persecuted leftists and communists, and culminated in a bloody crackdown against a student uprising.