I don’t know what the two finance ministers said behind closed doors, but the press conference run wild. Yanis Varoufakis was very clear: “Greek government will not negotiate with the Troika, only with official parters” he said during a joint press conference with the head of Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem in Athens Friday afternoon. Greek FinMin said also that the country “will not seek aid extension” and described the Troika as “flimsily-constructed & anti-European.”
He said further that the Greek government had “no intention to abstain from its pledges that there is no recognition of the bailout programs” and stressed “We won’t accept a continuation of this self-perpetuating crisis.”
Jeroen Dijsselbloem did not seemed impressed by that the Greek finance Minister said and rejected the Greek proposal of an international conference on the debt. He replied this venue already exists and “it is called the Eurogroup.”
The Eurozone chief said further that the two sides would decide what will happen next “before the program ends on February 28th.”
Here’s the Reuters report on the meeting between Dijsselbloem and Varoufakis:
Greece’s government will not cooperate with the EU and IMF mission bankrolling the country and will not seek an extension to the bailout programme, its finance minister said on Friday.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the eurozone finance ministers’ group who is in Athens for talks with the new government, said the two sides would decide what would happen next before the programme ends on February 28.
“This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people,” Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told reporters after their meeting. “Our first action as a government will not be to reject the rationale of questioning this programme through a request to extend it.”
Varoufakis said he had assured Dijsselbloem that Athens planned to implement reforms to make the economy more competitive and have balanced budgets but that it would not accept a “self-fed crisis” of deflation and non-viable debt.
In turn, Dijsselbloem said he had told the new government to respect the terms of the existing agreement between Greece and the eurozone and warned against taking unilateral steps, saying it was important not to reverse progress made so far.
He said continuing support from Europe depended on Greece respecting its obligations and it was up to to Athens to decide its position before moving forward jointly with the eurozone. (via The Guardian Live Blog)
Economical Hitchcock… Amazing and very interesting.
Do you have a link to the video? I can’t find any and woul love to see it!
I m writing a post with the video
I just posted it .
hello!
we are desperate to find a complete version of the video to subtitle it in french….
do you have a link to the press conference?
we are useless we can’t find it anywhere!
thnx
I can check it out, a bit later though.
check this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ma-8taVsQ but not complete.
I must say, Yanis Varoufakis is very impressive, what a difference with the simple messenger boy and banking/big corporation puppet Jeroen Dijsselbloem.
His job isn’t to be impressive but to ensure that Greece is able to cover its expenses, actually. I don’t think that his bad boy attitude is very helpful for that. Greece had a huge primary deficit in December and is fastly running out of money. How does he intent to solve that poblem? With credits from Russia, maybe?
:-/
That’s new for the PvdA (left-wing Dutch party, who turned totally to the right after the election) minister Jeroen Dijselbloem (also PvdA), a Syriza that keeps there election promises !
“official patnes”
“did not seemed impressed by that the Greek fiance Minister”
come on guys. . .
we have being writing like crazy since weeks
Also, “Athens Stock Exchange plunged -1.59%”
Plunged = minus
So, you should either say it “plunged 1.59”, or it “changed by -1.59%”.
The work of keep talking increases in importance as the media–especially English Language–searches to sensationalize and confirm the prejudices of the Euroclass to whom it is indebted for tips, news, access and so on.
Just heard the BBC interview with Varoufakis in which he courteously took apart the attempts by the interviewer to talk him into the corners of sensation and prejudice.
This will continue. The first defense of the establishment is lies.
That’s an interesting roundup of the news. Good job, kt!
But this makes me wonder if Tsipras and Varoufakis are on the same wavelength at all. Tsipras wants more time, but Varoufakis outrightly rejects the Troika making the due repayments on Feb. 28th, thus limiting the time for a solution to 4 weeks? Wtf? Who’s the prime minister there, who has the last word, really? It looks like Tsipras is the more reasonable guy, trying to avoid a default, but that doesn’t matter as long a he lets Varoufakis go full steam ahead towards a Grexit. I wouldn’t be surprised if Varoufakis gets fired soon. Tsipras has to make the decisions, he can’t allow his ministers to sabotage him.