FXStreet (Córdoba) – Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis also speaking at a separate press conference in Brussels explained the reasons of the rejection to latest Eurogroup proposals.
He said he couldn’t accept proposals first for being “seriously recessionary”, second the 5-month extension that was on the table was technically inadequate, financing terms did not add up, and third it did not contain any plan to give hope to consumer and depositors the plan could end the crisis.
He said to have explained to Eurogroup the government team did not have mandate to sign up to non-viable proposals, but no mandate to reject the proposals without consulting the people, only the Greek people could decide. He claimed that there is still time to improve the proposals and that Greece would work ‘night and day’ to achieve this.
He assured that if Greek people says yes, he will sign the agreement even if that means another political arrangement.
“The refusal of the eurogroup today to endorse our request for an extension of this agreement for a few days, a couple of weeks, to allow the Greek people to vote on their proposals – even when there is a very high probability that Greeks will go against our recommendation and vote yes – will certainly damage the credibility of the eurogroup as a democratic union of partner member state. I’m very much afraid that damage will be permanent”, Varoufakis added.
Greek FinMin said the decision to exclude him from further discussion “was taken by Dijsselbloem not our Eurogroup partners”.
And regarding a Grexit, Varoufakis stated: “Anyone who says that this referendum is about the euro is putting a very shaky interpretation on a clear fact, there are no provisions for exit from the monetary union”.
Finally, Varoufakis confirmed that he spoke with European Central Bank President, Mario Draghi, but gave no more details.
(Market News Provided by FXstreet)