Sant: Former PM says Greece must get substantial debt relief

Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has told the European Parliament the way forward for Greece’s economic adjustment programme can only be aided through substantial debt relief.

Sant intervened during a debate on the ongoing negotiations on the first review of the economic adjustment programme for Greece with Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici. “Most players in this miserable scenario subscribe to the dogma that Eurozone membership is irreversible. They should be prepared to pay in order to safeguard that dogma,” SAnt said.

The Labour MEP said the adjustment process remains detached from the hardship and suffering that millions of Greeks are having to endure.

“It is true that those who over-borrow have to pay for their mistakes, but there comes a time when a line must be drawn under their liabilities. For it is also true that those who over-lend should also have to pay for their mistake: that is the logic of the free market. In the case of Greece, those who over-lent have been let off almost scot-free. We are now having to support a policy in which a people who has been subjected to years of austerity is being forced to accept the prospect of having to carry further burdens.”

Sant said that despite the rhetoric of European solidarity, the so-called economic adjustment programmes for Greece had become a hypocritical sham. “The truth is that the process is driven by casuistic calculation based on the application of self-serving economic and financial positivism,” the MEP said.

Greece is expected to return to growth in the second half of 2016 and to a deficit of less than 3% in 2017.