Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2017-02-14-Speech-2-1548-000"
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"en.20170214.28.2-1548-000"2
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"Mr President, there may be some of us here who are familiar with the song ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles, which contains the line ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!’. Well the eurozone is rather like that. Whatever the pain, whatever the anguish, whatever the hardship, whatever the austerity imposed on the Greek people, Greece is never going to be permitted to leave the eurozone.
But the inconvenient truth is that Greece is wholly unable to pay its debts. Whatever the International Monetary Fund may or may not say, whatever the posturing of the Commission and the Council – which, sadly, we heard earlier – Greece cannot pay its debts, and what should happen is that the lenders must admit and accept that the money they have lent to Greece simply will not be paid back. In consequence, the lenders must forgive some or all of these loans. But unfortunately, there is absolutely no sign of this happening.
It is not often that I agree with a Marxist. However, the Marxist Greek former Finance Minister was correct about the loans to Greece. First of all, not one cent of one euro in the bail-out packages went to the Greek people. The money all went to the lenders. And secondly, the Troika was, and is, playing a game – a comedy, a masquerade – with the Greek Government and the Greek people, but this is very much for real. The game with the loan negotiations was, to quote, ‘extend and pretend’, that is to say, the loans were extended, but the pretence was that they could ever be paid back.
Greece has defaulted on its debts at least seven times since it became an independent country. When lenders lend to Greece, they cannot expect their loans to be bailed out as of right, and certainly not at the expense of the well-being of the Greek people and the Greek economy. So, in response to the Commission, to Mr Juncker, to Mr Verhofstadt and to Mr Verhofstadt’s groupies, of whom there are all too many in this Parliament, I would like to paraphrase William Jennings Bryant’s famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech: ‘You shall not press down upon the Greek people this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify them upon the cross of the euro.’"@en1
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