Yanis Varoufakis has announced to release his recordings of the Eurogroup sessions in the first half of 2015 at the end of February. His decision comes after the Greek Parliament Speaker refused to receive them when the ex finance minister handed them over to him during a plenary debate on Friday.
DiEM25, the European branch of Varoufakis MeRA25 said in a statement:
For the past five years, the Greek parties that capitulated on their country’s struggle for freedom in 2015, have been reproducing the Troika’s propaganda, that Yanis Varoufakis was going to the crucial Eurogroup meetings of 2015 without concrete proposals, tired his colleagues with abstract theoretical lectures, delayed negotiations and, in general, stumbled his way through his tenure.
This narrative is the thin thread on which their political legitimacy depends. Today, five years later, he has given his critics an excellent opportunity to challenge him based on the facts, not on unsubstantiated allegations.
On Friday, February 14, Yanis Varoufakis submitted, in digital form, the complete recordings of the Eurogroup meetings he participated in, to the members of the Greek Parliament, at the discretion of the President of the Parliament.
The reaction of the Establishment was sad, albeit predictable. The President of the Parliament immediately rejected the recordings as inadmissible, even though they had already been received by Parliament’s minute-keepers, and the national High Court of Greece has ruled that the recordings are legal.
THE HARD TRUTH
Contrary to the Establishment’s propaganda, the Greek delegation was the only one making technically sound proposals (e.g for smart debt restructuring, for a public debt management company, for a rational VAT system, for an algorithmic method to combat tax evasion, etc.)
Contrary to their propaganda, Schäuble, Dijsselbloem, Draghi, Lagarde and co. came to the Eurogroup without a single suggestion, even stubbornly refusing to read the Greek proposals.
These recordings prove this without a shadow of a doubt.
WHAT’S NEXT?
DiEM25, and MeRA25, refuse to submit to the Establishment’s suffocation of the truth. Citizens have the right to access the conversations that guided the events that so brutally affected their lives.
No one has the right to keep a sovereign Parliament, nor citizens, in the dark. This is why by the end of February we will release all recordings, so that all European citizens finally get to see the hypocrisy of the Establishment and the despicable way in which governments behave, in their name, behind closed doors.
Truth is not only revolutionary, as we once said, but also very useful. The truth sets us free, clarifies who stands on whose side, and helps us better understand who stands in our way to democratise Europe.
Meanwhile, a statement by DiEM25 and MeRA25 on Feb 16, said that the recordings transcripts will be released on March 10,2020.
Rather pathetic. The reaction of failed intellectual whose foray into the real world of brokering exposed his woeful ineptitude. Sadly, this personal denouement resulted in a greater burden for Greece. May he return to academe where his ego can do no further damage.
Pathetic yourself, Jim. This ‘failed intellectual’ had the balls to stand up the deep establishment and was betrayed in an act of gross capitulation . . .