Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis moved forward to yesterday a planned trip to Paris that was to launch the anti-austerity Greek government’s search for EU allies, his office said, after the government on Friday dramatically escalated its battle with its international creditors.
“The minister will travel to Paris on Saturday instead of Monday,” a spokesman told reporters, adding that Varoufakis was expected to hold meetings today.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel underlined the refusal of Greece’s European creditors to consider forgiving part of the debt-ridden nation’s rescue loans.
Photo: EPA
Athens insisted that it would honor pre-election promises to seek a cut on the nation’s rescue debt and to scrap painful budget measures that were demanded in exchange for the loans.
Merkel said in an interview published on Saturday by the daily Berliner Morgenpost that Europe would continue showing solidarity with Greece and other strugglers, “if these countries undertake their own reform and saving efforts.”
Asked whether there would be a debt cut for Greece, she replied that Athens was already forgiven for billions of euros by private creditors, adding: “I don’t see a further debt haircut.”
Varoufakis, an economist opposed to fiscal cuts, was to meet with French Minister of Finance Michel Sapin and French Minister of Economy Emmanuel Macron tomorrow afternoon.
Sapin’s office said that he would see Varoufakis at 4pm GMT today and that statements would be made to reporters 90 minutes later.
The government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was elected last Sunday on a platform of renegotiating Greece’s EU-IMF bailout and erasing half its debt.
Tsipras is also to see Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Tuesday and French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday.
Greece’s government dramatically escalated its battle with the country’s international creditors on Friday, saying that it would no longer meet with EU and IMF auditors and rejecting fresh loans offered for this month.
Athens had been promised another 7.2 billion euros (US$8.13 billion) in funds from the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB) if it completed reforms required by its lenders by Feb. 28.
Varoufakis said Athens preferred to do without the funds.
“This government was elected on the basis of analytically questioning the very logic of the program now being applied,” he said.
“Our first act ... will not be to reject the logic of questioning this program by requesting to extend it,” he told a news conference.
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