“Referendum call in 2015 left me speechless” said the woman who marked the era of Greece’s debt crisis, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens on Wednesday.
The former German chancellor’s visited Athens to promote the publication of the Greek translation of her memoirs, “Freedom,” comes just days ahead of the tenth anniversary of the 2015 bailout referendum on July 5.
Merkel said she realized that Greece was facing a major problem “quite late,” in late 2009, early 2010. Shortly after, she was told that “Greece needs money.” “I said I’m willing to help, but I can’t just give Greece money,” because of the no-bailout clause in the common currency, the euro.
She said a phone call she received by then Greek premier Alexis Tsipras informing her about his decision to hold a referendum for voters to decide whether to accept a bailout deal offered by international creditors “was the most surprising of my political career.”
She said she was “left speechless” when the leftist leader told her that he would be calling for a “No” vote in the poll, as it was clear that a negative vote would mean Greece exiting the euro.
“We said that we could not make a decision for a democratic country,” she added. Merkel said her first meeting with Tsipras, in Brussels, left her unimpressed.
Merkel, who became Germany’s first female chancellor on November 22, 2005, recalled another proposal for a Greek referendum put forward by former premier George Papandreou in 2011. That idea was eventually scrapped, amid growing discontent within the then ruling party, PASOK. The move to withdraw that proposal was “the best possible decision,” Merkel said, adding that the European Union “would not have known how to deal with a Greek exit” from the eurozone.
She said it was her view that Greece needed to get back “on the right track,” and admitted that she often played the role of “bad cop” in negotiations. She was also aware of her “unpopularity” in Greece, but said, “We had to return to a balanced economy in Greece.”
She said that she and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, were in favor of a debt haircut, while European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and French President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed it, as they feared a “loss of confidence in the euro.”
“I believed that we should relieve Greece of the burden, but the others also had good arguments. That’s why we went into a voluntary process. At the time, it was a risky process. They told me, ‘You’re crazy’ for insisting on the haircut.”
She also clarified that she never sought Greece’s exit from the eurozone, even though her stance led to tensions with her finance minister.
Among others, Merkel said that she admited Greeks having to deal with banks shut down, adding that Germans would have had difficulties to deal with such a reality.
Full interview with daily Kathimerini Executive Editor Alexis Papachelas HERE