Open Letter on the Critical Situation of Greece

15/05/2016

Open Letter

to the Heads of State and Government of the European Union who participated in the ‘Small Summit’ with Barak Obama

David Cameron, François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Matteo Renzi.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Given your prominent roles as leaders in European politics, we turn to you regarding a matter of utmost urgency: preventing the suffocation of Greece and its democratically elected government under the crushing weight of continuously expanding demands by its negotiating partners.

The disastrous humanitarian situation in Greece has been public knowledge for quite some time now. Added to this predicament are the burdens the Greek population must carry with regard to the accommodation of and care for refugees arriving in the country. In this situation, Greece desperately needs the support of its European neighbours instead of renewed stifling austerity. Time is of the essence: if Greece is to implement any sort of crisis management policy at all, then immediate steps must be taken. At this point, it is by all means your responsibility to prevent the breakdown of democratic political agency in Greece!

In light of the problems described, Greece is in urgent need of additional financial resources. At the same time, an abandonment of the crisis strategy imposed on Greece is imperative. Like the first two programmes, the third bailout package represents the kind of drastic treatment that will benefit neither Greece nor its creditors. One particularly damaging element of the third bailout package are the excessive demands for short-term and mid-term budgetary targets, designed to achieve a primary surplus of 3.5 percent by 2018. To demand even more far-reaching austerity measures at this very point in time, following years of deprivation and economic decline, is not only unrealistic and economically senseless, but above all simply cannot be reasonably expected of the Greek people any longer.

We therefore urge you to oblige the relevant EU institutions and those responsible for future negotiations to put the following points into practice:

that all credit instalments agreed on with Greece be paid out as scheduled (and without the introduction of new demands for austerity measures) in order for Greece to meet repayment requirements.
that Greece receive additional financial assistance in order to cope with the humanitarian crisis of its own population and the refugees coming to Greece, and

that a restructuring of Greece’s debt to the extent that the burden of debt service becomes sustainable (long-term debt titles with low interest rates) be at least initiated before the end of 2016. Moreover, with view to the underlying assessment of Greece’s capacity for debt service, excessive targets concerning short- and mid-term budgets must be significantly lowered.