Differences of opinion about where the country needs to go, is honorable in politics. But sent negotiations in chaos while people are suffering, is astonishing.
If something is baffling after six months negotiating a way out of the Greek debt crisis, it is not the clash of ideas about the need to budget surpluses, debt forgiveness or the implementation of reforms. That confrontation is legitimate and goes to the heart of the debate about the Greek crisis.
However outrageous is how the Greek government tackles the negotiations on the future of their country and their people. Yesterday the new Minister of Finance, Eucleides Tsakalatos arrived in Brussels without a new proposal for a rescue plan. At that same moment, the message came from Athens that banks remain closed longer and that hospitals are without medicines.
This is not the first time. On Wednesday, February 11th, in the first round of the Eurogroup on the Greek issue Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis agreed with the final declaration, until he called to Athens and then suddenly didn’t agree with anything anymore.
On February 16 the Greek delegation at the Eurogroup meeting in Brussels EU buildings leaked a text of a compromise, which they then publicly destroyed. Only hours later it appeared that the text never even came to the table of the Ministers of Finance.
The days after, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem negotiated a breakthrough with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. They agreed that Tsipras would send what they had agreed on in an official letter to the Eurogroup so that negotiations could continue. On February 20, it appeared that the Greek government had sent the wrong letter.
The following months the Greek Government sent lists and letters with proposals for reform. One of them was that tourists undercover as VAT Inspectors could be used, hidden cameras and recording equipment included. Whenever lenders asked precise and quantifiable proposals the answers contained little to nothing. Varoufakis then said in an interview he was "proud" of his "creative ambiguity".
Then the Greek government decided late last month to break off negotiations. Their own experts in Brussels had to hear the news via Twitter. In the referendum they put a proposal for reform that was never approved by the euro countries and that therefore had no vaulue and was even irrelevant. Moreover, it was once formulated in the context of the second bailout, which now no longer exists. And moreover, the Greek government advised to vote NO against the proposal that was even not existing anymore.
When the euro countries yesterday asked to make abundantly clear what the Greek government wants precisely, the new Finance Minister came empty-handed to Brussels. Differences of opinion are legitimate in politics. To make a chaos from historically important negotiations, is not. If anyone is to blame for this, it should be the Greek Government.
Greeks do it the greek way, that's why Greece is were it is now. They will never learn.