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Verhofstadt vs Tsipras full speech European Parliament 8 July 2015 English subtitles

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• published: 15 Sep 2015
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Verhofstadt vs Tsipras full speech European Parliament 8 July 2015 English subtitles On 3 July 2015, the Greeks rejected the bailout plan of the IMF, ECB and the European Commission in a referendum. 5 days later, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was invited by the European Parliament for a debate on his country... Watch both his reply and MEP Guy Verhofstadt's (ALDE fraction leader) in full. Translation of Greek intervention is mine, and not on the account of Mr Tsipras. For 5 months, negotiations have been indeed conducted behind closed doors but this is a huge political issue, about where we’re going to end up and we’ve seen today, from this very fruitful debate from the various contrasting views, which did not take the nature of state against state, in the Eurozone, they were highly political and I really do respect the views that were expressed, even those that were particularly rhetorical, and controversial. I fully agree with the view that has been put forward, that the Parliament has to play a more active role, how is it possible, I wonder, that we have 3 institutions, and we have the troika, and the Commission and the European Central Bank, well it’s there because it pays, but how is it possible, within the Troika, to have allowed people, who are taking decisions, that is the IMF, but it’s not the European Parliament, the heart of democracy in Europe. And I would like very honestly, to state that this is a European issue. If negotiations only exclusively conducted between the Greek side and the Commission, if that had been the case, than we would have come up with a solution a very long time ago. Unfortunately, we had to negotiate within a procedure, well, listen to what I have to say. We were required to discuss, among the Greek government on one side, and three institutions, which had very often conflicting views on reality. Now I’d like to focus on the essence of this and to answer some of the questions that have been raised in the course of this morning’s debate. First, if the Greek side has tabled proposals you will decide whether they were decent ones or not. Yes, we provided a 47-page document, which was the result, well not our positions, but we felt it was the result of a very difficult negotiation process. Unfortunately, the image that has been put out is that we didn’t table proposals. Last Monday, the Greek side came back with a new document with reliable proposals, which was accepted as the basis for discussions between the 3 institutions. Now, those proposals obviously include a very strong commitment to achieve fiscal objectives those which are required on the basis of the rules, because we do recognise the fact that the Eurozone has rules, and we respect them, but we also have the right to choose, we as a sovereign government, where we will put the tax burden in order to achieve those objectives. And I honestly believe that it’s the sovereign right of any government to increase taxation on profit-making businesses and not affect the lowest possible pensions and cutbacks further there to achieve those objectives. Now if it’s not the right of a sovereign government how it’s going to achieve those objectives then I think we need to adopt a very extreme anti-democratic view. In those countries under a programme elections shouldn’t take place. Governments should be appointed then, technocrats. And they will be responsible for taking the decisions. And I would like to inform you that you’re right, indeed, in Greece from the past, yes, there were things which are not correct, and we have to get rid of them. For example, early retirements. We were the first to take the initiative to say without having anybody to tell us, we want to get rid of those very early retirements in a country which is in such dire financial straits. We need to reform and our commitments then for fiscal adaptation are there so that we can have a surplus rather than deficits. © European Union 2015 - source: European Parliament Full Verhofstadt speech: http://audiovisual.europarl.europa.eu/Assetdetail.aspx?id=f142670a-c95b-479a-9c52-a4cf00978b42 Full Tsipras speech: http://audiovisual.europarl.europa.eu/Assetdetail.aspx?id=2b6d0529-5602-4055-9fc2-a4cf00bd9d4a http://audiovisual.europarl.europa.eu/Assetdetail.aspx?id=4dab4fad-078d-417e-b794-a4cf00baee8f subscribe: www.youtube.com/alainderaymond more info on: http://www.guyverhofstadt.eu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Tsipras http://www.alexistsipras.eu http://www.europarl.europa.eu