SYRIZA's Tsipras sends 'message to Merkel' in Guardian article

With an article printed in the British newspaper "The Guardian" entitled "The Greek Message to Angela Merkel" late on Monday, main opposition 'Coalition of the Radical Left' (SYRIZA-EKM) party leader Alexis Tsipras warned Germany's chancellor that the cycle of austerity and recession in Greece cannot continue. Tsipras noted that Greece was now in its fifth consecutive year of recession since the crisis began, starting with the spillover from the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 but since then deepened by the austerity policies imposed as a 'medicine' for Greece's debt. He stresses that these policies are devastating for the Greek people and have cost the country 22 percent of its GDP over that period, while unemployment, especially among young people, has soared. Among others, he also notes that the loans paid for by European taxpayers do not go to ordinary Greeks at all but into an 'escrow' account used exclusively to repay past loans and recapitalise near bankrupt private banks and cannot be used to pay salaries and pensions or to finance health, welfare or education spending. "The precondition for these loans is even more austerity, paralysing the Greek economy and increasing the possibility of default. If there is a risk of European taxpayers losing their money, it is created by austerity," Tsipras emphasises, stressing that this has to stop and that Europe needs a 'new plan' that challenges neoliberalism and can lead European economies back to recovery. At another point in the article, he also suggests that the policies being imposed on Greece are not an attempt to resolve the country's debt issues but to set up a new 'architecture' for Europe: "We believe that their aim is not to solve the debt crisis but to create a new regulatory framework throughout Europe that is based on cheap labour, deregulation of the labour market, low public spending and tax exemptions for capital." The complete article is available on the Guardian website at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/greek-message-for-angela-merkel