Controversial former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis this week claimed that the “agreement with (Greek PM Alexis) Tsipras was to threaten them (institutions) behind closed doors,” referring directly to a threat to leave the Eurozone during last year’s often acrimonious negotiations between the SYRIZA government and the “Troika” of creditors.
Varoufakis made the statement during an interview with an alternative news site in Athens, adding that the threat of “Grexit” was the reason why “I was not their favorite”, describing relations with European peers.
Even more revealing was Varoufakis’ quip that threats of Grexit were phony and that such a development, in any case, would cost one trillion euros – a prospect he said did not frighten him.
Specifically, the interview, posted on the website “Athens Live”, led with the phrase: When (German FinMin Wolfgang) Schauble said he’d throw me out I wasn’t afraid; do it, we won’t… There was no reason to go out in public and say it … The minute you say it you’re out,” he added.
Varoufakis, who served as the first finance minister in the SYRIZA government after January 2015 and then left the party ahead of the snap election in September 2015 in protest over the third memorandum, also wasn’t kind in his description of the influential German minister.
“Despite the fact that he (Schauble) is the most powerful minister in Europe , I nevertheless viewed him as an incompetent little man wrapped up in a conspiracy; amid powers that compete against one another, and who tries, like a symphony conductor, to achieve his own victory against (Angela) Merkel,” he said.
In two subsequent Tweets on his personal Twitter account over his statement regarding a meeting with Mario Draghi, he wrote in English: “The Greek media scandalously present my retaliation plan to haircut some bonds, if the EU closed down our banks, as a threat to Grexit,” after first writing in Greek: “My message to the ECB was moderate. If you close our banks we’ll proceed with a haircut of the older bonds. No threat of Grexit. From us.”
