• «We don’t want to blackmail anyone, but we don’t want to be blackmailed from anyone either».

The Vice President of the E.P. and MEP of SYRIZA Dimitrios Papadimoulis, gave from Strasbourg an interview to the U.S. international network CNBC. Referring to the negotiations of the Greek government with the institutions of the European Union, D. Papadimoulis said the following:

Dimitrios Papadimoulis:

«Our proposal is not putting any additional weight to any taxpayer, German taxpayer or to any other European taxpayer. We want from the Eurogroup to put in force its decision, which already exists from November 2012, which says that when the Greek economy has net surpluses in its budget, the Eurogroup will decide additional measures for decreasing the Greek public debt, without putting additional burden to the European tax payers. Our effort is to find a win-win solution in the coming days and I’m very optimistic that we will succeed. We don’t want to burden anyone; we want our economy to turn towards growth».

«There is no plan B for the Greek government. Our plan is only the plan A: For Greece to become a respectful, equal member of the Euro Area and of the European Union. Having development of its economy, reducing the unemployment, putting in force a lot of reforms related with the administration, the tax system, cracking down the oligarchy phenomenon in the Greek economy, which is a very annoying phenomenon, because it creates gaps in the open competition of the real economy; and also for us, the crucial point is that we had a program in Greece which totally failed. Our goal is to find a solution commonly accepted from Greece and also from our partners. As Vice-President of the European Parliament, I can assure you that the large majority in the E.P. faces the problem like that».

Journalist:

– To finish give me a very brief answer, what would the Eurozone lose by seeing Greece leave?

Dim. Papadimoulis:

«The Grexit does not exist as a real chance, because the common interest of the whole Euro area is for Greece to remain in the Euro. Yesterday ILO published a study which says that in Germany there will be a huge increase of unemployment, if there is a case for a Grexit and also all the experts say that in this case, which really does not exist; there will be a domino effect for all the Euro area and for the whole European Union. It’s important to note that in the U.K. which doesn’t participate in the Euro area there are fears for such a scenario... So I repeat: we don’t want to blackmail anyone, but we don’t want to be blackmailed from anyone either».