The Minister of Economy Giorgos Stathakis has argued that Greece is not trying to “blackmail” the European Union, but rather trying to find a logical solution, in an interview for CNN.
Mr. Stathakis said that “we do not want to go back to the state of affairs that existed prior to the crisis; Greece had many problems and we are not blackmailing the Eurozone” and that “we are trying to find the most logical solution for both sides, a solution that will minimize the losses for the European tax payers”.
Furthermore, Mr. Stathakis explained that “the basic idea is to have the repayment of the debt indexed by the rate of growth of the Greek economy which means in practical terms that those indexed bonds will be repaid at a time according to the rate of growth of the Greek economy”.
Consequently, argued Mr. Stathakis, “that means a new prolongation obviously of the repayment of the debt but at the same time that austerity will not be the primary task, development of growth will be the primary task and the repayment of the debt will follow”.
