The then Greek finance ministerYanis Varoufakis attended 13 meetings in 2015 for negotiations with the Eurogroup, and so-called Troika, over the terms of a rescue plan to relieve his country's debt crisis (see main article here). He did not record the first three meetings of the Eurogroup talks which he attended, held on February 11th, 16th and 20th 2015 just weeks after his radical-left Syriza party had won parliamentary elections in Greece, when he was appointed as minister.
During the last of those three meetings, the Eurogroup participants agreed to extend the financial aid programme for Greece that had been established in 2012, and which in theory was due to end on February 28th.
Varoufakis began recording the negotiations for a further bailout during teleconference discussions between the members of the Eurogroup on February 24th. The finance ministers and representatives of the “institutions” – the so-called Troika made up of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – who took part in the talks had already begun placing in question key parts of the bailout extension that had been agreed on February 20th.
The meeting of the Eurogroup in the Latvian capital Riga on April 24th (recordings below) marked a turning point in the negotiations. The Greeks faced a notably hostile attitude from the participants who, for the first time, raised the idea of Greece’s exit from the eurozone, and subsequently the European Union, dubbed “Grexit”. According to the then European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, Pierre Moscovici, who took part in all the meetings as the EU Commission’s representative, it was as of that meeting that the participants realised they were being taped by Varoufakis, which Moscovici told Mediapart were “the methods of a delinquent”.
Beginning in May, Greek economist Euclid Tsakalotos was appointed by Athens to the Greek delegation, alongside Varoufakis (who remained finance minister) as “coordinator of the political team for negotiations”. The Greek government made significant concessions – notably by agreeing to austerity measures which it opposed in its election campaign programme.
During the Eurogroup meetings which followed (recordings below), Varoufakis continued to try to obtain, iin exchange for the concessions made by his prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, debt relief. But it would be in vain.
Tsakalotos would replace Varoufakis as finance mintser in early July 2015.
The Eurogroup meetings of June 24th, 25th and 27th (extracts below) are undoubtedly the most dramatic. The different finance ministers present note the absurdity of such repetitive attempts to secure an agreement that remained intangible. The ECB pushed for reaching an agreement, which Germany would refuse.
At the Eurogroup meeting on June 25th, the tensions spilled over; there were disagreements between the “institutions” (the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank), and also between them and the then German finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble.
The Eurogroup meeting on June 27th 2015 took place just hours after when, on the evening of June 26th, the Greek government announced its decision to hold a referendum, on July 5th, on the bailout conditions demanded of Greece, which had been the subject of the negotiations over the previous months. The eurozone finance ministers were dumbfounded, faced now with the very real possibility that the Greek population itself would decide to enact a “Grexit”. Such was the tension that the Eurogroup subsequently excluded Yanis Varoufakis from its ranks in order to hold a second meeting of the remaining 18 finance ministers of the eurozone.
The final recordings (see below) are of that June 27th meeting and subsequent Eurogroup declarations on June 30th and July 1st 2015:
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- The French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse