Three months after Greece signed the third bailout agreement requiring harsh measures and reforms, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras “managed” to sign a worse deal than the one he asked Greek people to reject in the July 5 referendum.
Juncker and European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Pierre Moscovici spoke about the negotiations between Greece and lenders in a documentary on France’s ARTE television channel.
Juncker said that the harsh reforms and measures of the bailout program was “an achievement” by Tsipras, that “Greeks, faced with an anti-European propaganda rejected a text and one month later the Greek government suggested a text that was much harsher than the one rejected by Greek people.”
“I never understood Greece’s strategy and I honestly believe that after all we lived those days, Greece didn’t have a real strategy. The strategy and the plan were devised day by day,” Juncker said.
Moscovici said that former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis had a decorative role in negotiations and that the plan of the Greek government was to scare Europe with a potential Grexit.
“They wanted to take us until the end of June with the clock ticking hoping that a Grexit would scare us and make us back down on the debt and some of crucial reforms. That was their strategy and Varoufakis was to not negotiate,” said the commissioner.
Moscovici also criticized State Minister Nikos Pappas who was present in the negotiations and holds him partly responsible for not coming to an agreement at the end of June. “We were negotiating for 24 hours and we lost an opportunity. I believe Alexis Tsipras was willing to deliberate, but every time Pappas was saying to him “No, Mr. prime minister, you can’t back down here, you can’t start from this basis,” and he (Tsipras) was coming back saying, “I can’t start from this basis,” Moscovici said.
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