Dijsselbloem: Greece should have been grateful to European aid, kept mouth shut

Greece should have been grateful to European aid and kept its mouth shut, the former chief of Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem said more or less in an interview on Saturday. He has clearly not recovered yet from the traumatic experience with former Greek finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. At the same time and after three painful bailout agreements that increased the debt and pushed millions to impoverishment, Dijsselbloem dared saying that  “Greece is obviously not a success story, demands on Greeks were to heavy” and that the Greek “crisis has been so deep, that you can’t call it a success”

Euro zone countries have asked for too much from the Greek people in return for international bailout loans, former Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in an interview on Dutch television on Saturday.

“On reforms, we have asked a lot from the Greek people, too much,” Dijsselbloem told current affairs program Nieuwsuur. “Reforms are hard enough to accomplish in a society with a well-functioning government, but this was obviously not the case in Greece.”

“Greece is obviously not a success story,” Dijsselbloem said. “Their crisis has been so deep, that you can’t call it a success.”

At the same time, in the usual North European arrogance, he said that Greece should be grateful for the help it received and keep its mouth shut.

Speaking about former ex finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, Dijsselbloem has obviously not recovered from the traumatic experience in front of the cameras in February 2015 in Athens.

“Politics is just a tricky job, you have to compromise, Greece was dependent on help from others, and then to put a big mouth against the people who help you … We set conditions for that. Disagree, but you can not raise a big finger at them,” Dijsselboem said.

Is Dijsselbloem such a political naive to believe that Varoufakis was acting on his own and that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras did not agree with the negotiation policies in the first half of 2015? Apparently….

Does Dijsselbloem who blindly followed the strict austerity orders by German finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble during 2013-2018, now show some kind of remorse? Hardly.

He is one – yet another one – self-righteous, thin-weight man who found himself in a powerful position and who now has nothing else to do than write a book about his glorious past, when he was at the spotlight of media.

He and his Labor party were defeated big in the Dutch parliamentary elections last year and is set to publish a book on his time as head of the Eurogroup.

The book has the title “The Euro crisis the story from the inside” or else “The Animal Farm of Eurogroup and EU solidarity.”

The man who had nothing to say during his term as Eurogroup chief, suddenly has found his tongue and keeps giving interviews whenever sees a microphone in front of him.

Dijsselboem’s interview with Nieuwsuur  in Dutch

In an interview last week with Greek daily tanea, Dijsselbloem also admitted that mistakes were made by the Europeans in handling the Greek crisis, saying that they initially experimented and it took four years for them to stand on their feet and set up mechanisms to confront the crisis.

He conceded that a different policy should have been implemented in Greece, as the bailout programmes were very strict, and their implementation was very difficult. He noted, however, that Greek politicians made many mistakes before the crisis.

The former Dutch Finance Minister who has zero knowledge about finances and who turned Eurogroup chief thanks to Schaeuble went so far to blame on Germany for its delay in accepting the need for collective European action, with the implementation of bailout programmes in countries that were in danger.

Greek Sunday newspaper Documento has also in interview with Dijsselbloem today.

The former eurogroup chief accuses PASOK and New Democracy saying “intermingling interests were enjoying protection by the previous governments.”