The prospect of the euro imploding in 2011 may be the only thing that has moved Germany’s iron chancellor to public tears, according to an expose in the Financial Times (FT) on how then Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s abortive proposal for a referendum on Greece’s bailout memorandum was killed right away and the eurozone was saved from possible implosion.
“That is not fair. I am not going to commit suicide,” the FT quoted Merkel as saying in November 2011, in front of US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who launched an attack on Papandreou and insisted that any referendum would be only on whether Greeks wanted to remain in the eurozone.
Effectively, Papandreou was poised to stage a referendum in Greece that could effect the very survival of the common currency.
Days ahead of crucial European Parliament elections, and with euroscepticism on the rise, there have been a plethora of Greek and foreign press reports on how Greece was led into the bailout memorandum.
The Financial Times report, by the paper’s Brussels correspondent Peter Spiegel, details the political considerations behind the move of the Greek prime minister, who faced a near revolt in his own party and a total lack of support from Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy, then the main opposition.
For the European officials at the dramatic G20 summit in the French resort of Cannes, a Greek referendum could have spelled the end of the eurozone, and had to be stamped out at all costs.
That, according to the FT report, resulted at the end of Papandreou’s priministership, not least because his finance minister and deputy prime minister, Evangelos Venizelos, was by all accounts eager to replace him.
When George Papandreou announced his referendum proposal at a meeting of his parliamentary group, Venizelos hardly seemed surprised. Indeed, he immediately rose to vehemently defend the proposal as a much needed “catharsis”.
By the time he returned from the Cannes meeting, however, Venizelos had done an about face, opposing the referendum and maintaining that he was not part of the decision to hold it.
“We have to kill this referendum,” European Commission president Barroso is reported to have said to Venizelos, who agreed almost immediately. “Killing the referendum idea would also be the end of Mr Papandreou,” the report notes.
Source: enetenglish