Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took to the airwaves on Thursday evening to provide a one-on-one interview with a news anchor from a private Athens television station, where, among others, he defended his call for a referendum last July and said its “No” result led to a new and better agreement with creditors.
“No one can criticize us for being unprepared, maybe they can criticize us for not achieving more … no one says, however, that with (previous PM Antonis) Samaras we’d have achieved more,” he said, in response to a question on pension cuts that his government recently made.
In other highlights, he said never negotiated the country exit from the Eurozone, but understood that a plan was being promoted by the German finance ministry to force Greece out, something he said was not known by the German chancellor.
In a bid to paint a brighter coming period, he said there is now “a real prospect” for improvement with his leftist government, “and not the virtual one, like Samaras’, as he had a fifth review in front of him that was not achievable.”
He also bypassed the repeated budget deficits of years past and said it was the debt that causes the country to assume more loans, now allocated by institutional creditors and not the market.
