Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras gave a wide-ranging television interview on Monday evening on a local private Athens television station, as his government continues to face two major problems: completing a first evaluation of the “Greek program” mandated by creditors and the ongoing refugee / migrant crisis, which is particularly acute in Turkey-bordering Greece.
In terms of the refugee crisis, Tsipras said the problem “exceeds the country’s capacity” to deal with it successfully.
In a change of language from his pre-election statements, Tsipras now said that an exit from the Schengen pact would mean Greece’s marginalization, while saying Turkish desperately tried to block NATO’s involvement in anti-trafficking patrols in the Aegean.
Turning to Greece’s tenuous finances, he expressed his confidence that creditors’ representatives will return to Athens by March 10, spiking his optimism with comments of Greece’s banks being the most fully recapitalized in Europe and again dismissing the specter of a bank deposit haircut.
