ECB has ‘rope round our neck,’ says Greek PM Tsipras
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wants to issue short-term debt such as Treasury bills to plug his government’s financing gap and warned in a German magazine that if the European Central Bank objected, it would be assuming a grave responsibility.
“Then it will be back to the thriller we saw before February 20,” he told Der Spiegel, referring to the date Greece agreed a four-month bailout extension with its euro zone partners.
“The ECB has still got a rope round our neck,” Tsipras said, according to excerpts of the interview released on Friday.
The leftist prime minister said he did not want Greece to leave the euro “because I love Europe” and said he had asked all his cabinet ministers – not just his combative Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis – for “fewer words and more deeds.”
[Reuters]
